The Relics of Dusk: A Star Wars Fairy Tale
by kimpixelledust
Summary: Written nearly a decade before "The Last Jedi," "The Relics of Dusk" is the story of President Leia Organa of the New Republic, Luke Skywalker who has returned to Dagobah for a life of contemplation, and the commando, Padme Solo, who leads her elite team on a secret mission that will involve her estranged Uncle, a planet where it's always sunset, and unbearable choices.


_**Star Wars: The Relics of Dusk**_

 _"…Over thirty years since the death of the Emperor and the end of the evil Galactic Empire, the Galaxy has moved on through fits and starts towards a representative republic._

 _The new goals of peace, freedom, and prosperity define the new republic. Along with members of the Old Republic, the New Alliance is joined by far reaching systems that avoided the conflagrations of tyranny and of revolution. One of those worlds, the remote System of Olim, a colony for advanced study and pacifistic is in the process of negotiating a treaty with the New Alliance, headed by President Leia Organa. The Dusk System, another remote system of great elegance and cultural heritage, defined by its rituals and traditions, aids President Organa in the negotiations with the sometimes eccentric tendencies of Olim._

 _The great Luke Skywalker has retreated to a life of seclusion on Dagobah, former home of Master Jedi, Yoda, with only his trusted droid R2D2 as a companion, shunning all social contact. Despite unrelenting pressure to teach the ways of the Force, he feels it is a new time ready for new ways. Many are unsympathetic to his new vision based on compassion._

 _Still, insurrections against the new government smolder throughout the galaxy. Stormtroopers, unaware or unable to comprehend the collapse of the Galactic Empire, wage pointless violence against the New Alliance in remote systems, living in a time past._

 _Colonel Padme Solo, daughter of Leia Organa and Han Solo, and her elite team of the best commandos in the galaxy search and hunt down these rogue elements as a new era dawns.…"_

 **The Call Home**

Colonel Padme Solo looked out from the dense brush as she had done a thousand times before, in training, in combat; she barely had to think about it anymore. She chewed on the strange sweet goo of artrin, too sickly sour for most others, but she had it shipped to her by caseloads to avoid the dreaded possibility of running out. Her beautiful face and intense brown eyes belied the danger to those who might cross her. She appeared this ethereal muse creature, the stuff of dreams and poetic inspiration, until suddenly this dark angel of death with her high gauge repeating pressure blaster ended any and all illusions created by her sweet countenance.

Major Nyroy stood next to Padme in the brush, wondering if his feet would ever be dry again. Certainly, he was accustomed to such surroundings and endeavors, but felt the stultification of repetition and a certain sense of pointlessness. He wondered how long before these crazy clones would die off without his assistance. The Empire wasn't exactly churning out clones.

Nyroy doubted Padme understood how her visage could upset the preordained beliefs driving these lost soldiers to an old way, unexpected beauty, the feminine breath of life interrupting all order and as such, a bit of lost sanity. He thought of home, his wife, his children, so proud of his rank and work in the New Alliance; he wondered if they only knew how much time they spent waiting, doing nothing and talking about absolutely nothing, if they would be quite so impressed with his work.

Nyroy felt the time was coming for him to be home with his children, always larger when he returned, a more distant look in their alien eyes. It had all been so exciting to him at first; he was an exceptional soldier with the best scientific mind amongst several classes. Idealism at helping defend this great new era had a certain thrill at first, but as time went on, it all seemed a bit same to him. Fighting uninformed Stormtroopers or explaining something simple to his children like the shape of a truncated dodecahedron; it was something of a colorless blur. He reasoned that as long as the momentum, his actions in life, if they bent towards the light like a flower in the sun, the need for glory, the longings for action were just fine. But the excitement lessened to be the same as he got older and he observed the awe in his children at the small and seemingly ordinary. One didn't need to seek out adventure so much as see the seemingly ordinary with new eyes. It's wasn't the size of his actions anymore that mattered but the meaning contained within them. He might have told his best friend, Padme, but he doubted she would really understand or care. They had started out the same, with swelling ambition and talent, but something changed when his wife handed him their first child. Padme still longed for the possibility of great achievement, great heroism, glory, and worried she might not have the opportunity to change the course of things. Peace and freedom had their own price. Glory was for darker times.

The great arc of the Sygelle System's rings illuminated Padme and Nyroy's surroundings with their reflected light, even though the commandos were attempting to use the cloak of night. The ring-light would have been the same as moonlight but for its glistening and sparkling quality. The remote, small moon was a lovely place, if too far out to be on any meaningful trade route or military outpost. If Nyroy could appreciate the aesthetic quality of the place, his advanced mental capacities often doomed him to boredom. Padme on the other hand was feral in her ultimate approach. Where Nyroy could calculate the relative temperature of the air to determine the nearness of an adversary without any mechanical aid to the fifth decimal place, Padme returned to primal senses, waiting for the thrill of the kill. Soon enough, a rustle in the distant foliage gave up its prey's secrets for this night's mission and peeked her instincts. She may have been named for a stoic queen, her grandmother, but she was a goddess of war.

"All too easy," Padme whispered as she caught the all-too-white armor in the darkness of the Storm Trooper in her cross hairs. Fortunately for the Stormtrooper, Ursula the Wookie, an indispensable part of the improbable team, cousin of the renowned Chewbacca, wanting to be near Han Solo's daughter to protect her per Chewbacca's request long ago, life debts went far in their culture and family - if Padme actually needed protection from anyone other than herself, suppressed the urge to howl as large insects found comfortable refuge in her coarse, curly blonde fur, the brush still rustled. Ursula scratched and swatted with all the stealth and delicacy she could without being driven mad by the itching. Padme looked over at Ursula who knew full well she was not keeping to procedure and froze in place as to not interpret the carefully executed shot about to take place. If Padme was not five feet four inches tall, she could still impose her seemingly diminutive presence on a seven feet ten-inch Wookie and cow her into fear.

Ursula often wondered if Padme felt the same connection to her that Han Solo had felt with Chewbacca. There was no doubt of the bond beyond duty between Han and Chewbacca, but Ursula felt a quavering space between Padme and herself. Han, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian had long ago disappeared in the Sanhedron Arches of the Gossamer Nebulae. A sudden singularity, not predicted by any of the known indicators had altered anyone to the birth of the new black hole. Of course, they had to be assumed dead along with the half dozen populated planets and moons in consumed in its gothic wake, but some part of Ursula never quite believed. Chewbacca would be back someday she felt. But she wondered if she just sensed her own time to join him. It was believed in Wookie culture that one could sense but not foresee one's own death and what came after.

Lt. Pythie, tall, green, somewhat pointy as all the chosen warriors of the Cildengull Region were, and all things serious without irony or humor, sat in the brush as Padme's backup; the same Stormtrooper in his cross hairs as well if off to the left. If Padme didn't make the shot, he would finish it. He was the only one amongst the team who had no concern that Padme would most certainly be irritated if he got the shot. To Pythie, it was about the mission and Padme merely a strong personality as soldiers often have.

L3L5, the new model medical droid assigned to all units per President Organa's new executive order, floated in back of the commandos, somewhat distracted by the study of the various insects torturing Ursula by inches. If a medical droid was a thoughtfully pragmatic addition to all combat units, the lack of intense combat around the galaxy made refining the new droid system a slow-moving if laborious process; not all the kinks and quirks had been worked out yet. The L3 Series prototypes were lab droids, surgeons, and specialists, not sturdy multi-taskers able to adjust functions quickly in combat theater. Outside of patient care, an understanding of environment had not been primary in the programming of these wellness machines, and it often impeded speed, if the goal of saving lives had been proven on more than occasion by their presence. Having a machine with the skill of a neurosurgeon in emergency situations did have benefits, if often unintended ones for civilians in pedestrian accidents not necessarily needing brain surgery.

It would not be Ursula interrupting the moment with pained growls, nor Nyroy sighing and drifting away from the present moment in ennui, or Pythie taking the shot, or L3L5 making too much noise that would save the life of the somewhat pitiable, lost Stormtrooper in the brush.

"Excuse me miss…" as a reflective golden hand tapped Padme on the shoulder and caused her to misfire with great explosive drama. Startled, the Stormtrooper fired with Imperial precision but only at what appeared through his limiting helmet to be a clump of brush. Ursula, Nyroy, and Pythie were a moment late firing upon the fleeing clone jumping on his speeder bike and disappearing deep into the dense foliage. They did succeed in scarring several ancient trees, but not much else, as old timber fell with a loud crash. There was actually a fine for damaging the old conifers. But they would be long gone before the region's ranger saw the damage.

"What the…" Padme swung around to see C3P0 standing above her not completely clear as to what had just occurred. Then Padme rolled her eyes and threw her blaster to the ground sending out a discharge that barely missed L3L5.

"What are you doing here?" she snarled at the last droid in the galaxy she would want anywhere near a combat unit. For reason's she couldn't comprehend, Padme's mother still liked C3P0 and wouldn't have the droid reprogrammed for something useful – anything useful.

"I'm so sorry Miss Padme, I mean, Colonel Solo, I didn't realize…" C3P0 said knowing it was always best to start with an apology to Padme whatever the situation. Nyroy waved for all of them to exit the brush, there was no reason to keep up any pretense of deception at that point, and the bugs were becoming dazed with the engorgement of blood from the now anemic Wookie.

"Don't worry about it; I think there's maybe three Stormtroopers on this system. It doesn't really matter," Nyroy said sarcastically, tired of picking off lone Stormtroopers in their delusions.

Padme glared at Nyroy who at times took a perverse pleasure in inciting her. "What do you mean it doesn't matter? It's an Imperial Stormtrooper!"

Nyroy knew he risked insubordination, but then again thought, it could get him reassigned somewhere he didn't have to carry all his housing on his back. "He's an Imperial Stormtrooper without an Empire. You see my point?" Nyroy did come to regret his remark as Padme's glare made his immense brainpower shrink to the regret of a child caught talking back.

"It's the mission," she stated flatly, her piercing eyes burning through him. Pythie looked with a slight disdain at Padme and Nyroy wasting energy and time, although they seemed to enjoy engaging in pointless banter at times.

"Actually, the mission was to secure the system, and truly I think we could say the system is secure. What are three clones going to do? Recruit bugs?" Pythie slapped at some large thing drawing green blood out of his neck.

"Enough with the second-guessing orders!" Padme flared and returned her attention to her initial irritant.

"What do you want, C3P0?" C3P0 was exchanging pleasantries with L3L5 as Padme turned her attention to the gleaming, golden droid.

"Oh, miss, the Princess, ah, President, has requested that you return to the Capitol right away," C3P0 said having better rehearsed his message than it actually came out.

"What? Why?" Padme looked to her comrades for some shared outrage at this seemingly random and awkwardly delivered order. She found none. Nyroy, Pythie, and Ursula just shrugged.

"I don't know, I'm not privy to matters of state, and I have to say, I rather prefer the practice as is," C3P0 added wistfully, "she just wants you and your team to come back secretly. That's why she asked me to come with the automated ship instead of sending a transmission."

Padme took this in for a moment, realizing they may actually have something important to do, even if it were most likely some diplomatic display of military prowess amongst the all the contrived civilities of diplomacy to convince the elites of some backwater to join the Alliance. "All right then," she said waving the group forward. Dawn crested in the distance behind them as they trudged from the brush carrying all their equipment and the rings above them appeared like shredded floating paper.

 **The Galactic Capitol**

Finally, it seemed best not to put the Galactic Capitol City _on_ any planet or total system. If a more prescient citizenry would argue there was great virtue in having their politicians _elsewhere_ , the less forward thinking were inclined to notice whatever system became the seat of government not only would attain a particular prestige, but a great deal of economic advantage. So as the Constitutional Convention lingered on for years and some systems were beginning to write their own individual constitutions and negotiate unregulated trade deals, it became clear a solution to the simple problem of location had to be solved sooner rather than later.

When the proposal was made at the Constitutional Convention on Naboo that a singular, new Space City be entirely built by the New Alliance, a grand and glorious space station with the practical elegance as well as the utility of being movable, a stony silence befell the clamor of the room bespeaking a funeral for the proposer's career. The young delegate from Kessel thought he may have well ended the New Alliance forever until the room burst into applause. As it was, his name, Harmon Evolin, would gain a great place in history for a structural design he ended up deploring.

As it was, most felt the spires and arches and decorative swirling with no utilitarian value made a fine and noble statement for the New Alliance. Harmon's sheer sense of pragmatism which led him to his flash of engineering genius by nature didn't grasp the worth of the decorative embellishments. Still the practical nature of the space station with its gleaming presence in many a night skies married much of what was needed in physical form to help unite disparate groups trying to join into something larger than the sum of the only partially reconciled and war-weary parts.

Padme looked out a porthole of the spy ship at the glistening domes and spires of the magnificent city growing larger before them, and if not completely immune to the grandeur of the setting, it had another quality for her, that of being home - where she grew up. Every millimeter imbued with a memory that could be sentiment if she had ever allowed that in herself.

The small spy ship was cleared into a docking bay without military ceremony or political pretense. C3P0 had not embellished or emphasized when he said the President wanted their return kept secret. Special agents dressed as cargo specialist whisked the commandos and C3P0 off to a room to change into civilian clothing. They were informed this was requested by the President before being brought to the Presidential Hall surreptitiously through back hallways. Even Padme hadn't known of the back elevator to the grand chamber.

They were led into the President's Hall silently and without instructions. The agents used their talent and training to disappear quickly, impressive even to the commandos they were guiding. Nyroy nodded with appreciation of their stealth.

The giant domed space of octagonal glass cutouts gave view to a great section of the galaxy swirling with all its violent majesty. Nebulae and dust clouds loomed with a kind of glowing splendor that replaced any need for art in the hall. Leia stood alone looking out over the great pinkish clouds of dust off in the distance, as if searching for some small sign of something lost a long time ago.

Leia didn't notice at first as her daughter, C3P0, and the commandos entered the room with her elite agents. Leia was still beautiful, if tired with age and loss, the realization of one's hopes and the disillusionment that can bring, and the simple pressure of having power. Leia turned to see her fiery daughter all wide-eyed and looking anxiously at her. Padme reminded her of herself, of Han, of another time when she too was quite certain she knew best. Leia smiled the smile of a mother and said, "Hello, Padme," and held her arms out with some force of habit. Padme shook her head and glanced side to side as if to say, "I'm supposed to be a military leader in front of these soldiers, Mom!" Leia understood and waved for them to sit at the great conference table of crystal and stone. The stone had been taken from a remnant of Alderaan captured before swirling into a cluster moon. At the center of the table, appeared an elegant crystalline abstract structure which beamed holograms in the elegant surroundings.

"Welcome to all. We've received several of these distress messages," Leia said plainly and with easy authority, despite the fact she was shorter than everyone in the room, even her petite daughter. Leia looked around the table at these youngsters, some she knew well, and wondered if they were ready for what was ahead of them. Then sighed knowing no one ever really is ready for anything.

From the crystal transmitter in the center of the table what appeared a flickering holograph of what once been a handsome man with a bearing of some distinction flickered into holographic view, hastily recorded and transmitted with interference and white noise, he was disfigured by seeping gouges growing from within, ill formed bones pierced the man's own eye, blood pouring down the blinded side. "We haven't been able to isolate the organism. People are despairing." He was silent for a moment; a tear appeared to trickle from the blood-soaked eye. "Nothing, none of the animals, nothing has any resistance. It's as if all living order is being destroyed at the most basic level, I can't, I can't…" A shrill scream in the distance took his attention then he turned sadly back to stating his message knowing it would be his last. "There is something to this thing I can't explain. It's not a thing at all. We all live in this universe with life abundant in it and think it is this natural thing. Stardust just churning on itself and making the stuff of dreams. But there's this something else I can't explain, but only know when it's not there, it's gone from the fabric around us; in us. If you can't help us, take care to help yourselves," he said taking a blaster to his head and firing almost indifferently. The transmission continued but it produced no sound. Leia turned off the recording, the holographic blood splatter disappearing from the table.

Leia stood while the others sat silently looking at an empty space. A quick glance back and forth to see how one or the other might be reacting is all the commandoes would grant as emotional reaction, but questions and annoyance faded away with the dismal message. "We lost all communication with the Raladan System seven days ago. Probes sent have not been able to detect any life forms. No life forms at all. Since then, five systems in the Nardal region have all sent similar messages then gone silent." Leia paused for a moment. She sat down seeming to be lost for a moment thinking of one of the worlds that most likely no longer existed and remembering other lost worlds. Leia looked over at Padme, wondering if her future would be taken as her past once had been. "We are evacuating nearby systems as quickly as possible, but very reasonable resistance against taking in refugees who may or may not be infected is starting. There are also just the logistic difficulties of evacuating entire systems. The entire planet seems to go dead. We can't replicate whole ecosystems in short order. It's total annihilation."

"Is it the Empire?" Padme interjected somewhat startling the sober attentiveness of the group at the table. Leia looked over at Padme, if briefly perplexed by the question.

"No," Leia replied, "There's absolutely no indication of any political intent behind this. It appears to be a biological or more accurately, anti-biological threat."

"Do we have any idea what caused this?" Nyroy asked more concerned with science than politics.

"No," Leia's answer was plain and stolid, handing in the air as if the hologram were still there.

Pythie looked at Leia with the admiration he long held for her, in part why he had found it not too terribly difficult to tolerate Padme's more abrasive tendencies, and asked Leia with sincerity, "Wouldn't this be a scientific operation, not a military one? How do we fight a thing like this?" Leia looked over at Pythie and nodded her understanding to him.

"It would be," she said, "if we had any science, any theory at all to deal with it."

Nyroy looked at Leia with concern. "What then? Quarantine?" he asked. "Are we going to have to hold people to their systems?" Nyroy could not completely contain the anxiousness building in him and sounding in his voice.

"We'll do what we have to do," Padme said, trying to repress her own feelings brought about by the prospect of having to shoot down unarmed citizens fleeing for their lives. She liked a fight, not a slaughter.

"Fortunately, we haven't been forced to make that kind of choice yet," Leia said with some energy, as if it might be something good in the steady stream of bad news. "We don't know how this is carried from system to system."

Growing more concerned, Nyroy hesitated, "If it's a spontaneous mutation…" Leia cut him off, as if she wanted to spare him speaking the words.

"We would have extremely limited options then," she said. Leia stood up from her chair to glance over at the window with the swirl of gas clouds holding planets, civilizations, and all the stories deep within them in silent majesty. Leia tried to assimilate the decisions her position might force her to make but wasn't sure anyone in their right mind really had such a capacity. "We know the basic dictum. The greatest good for the greatest number," Leia said as if to reassure herself. Heads bobbed up and down at the table knowing well this meant some innocents might die to preserve life, the triage theory of helping those who might live first and not staying with the dying. They were trained to understand this as soldiers, but none became a soldier towards that kind of end; the point was to protect innocence, but they were old enough and seasoned enough to know the universe did not come quite so neatly packaged as to always know when and where to shoot. They were still young enough not to question whether they or anyone could ever know such a thing. Still, the prospect of enforcing a medical quarantine presented itself as treading through moral and psychological quick sand. Ursula groaned with angst. No one responded, but the groan spoke for everyone.

"We have been working on a treaty with the Olim system," Leia said, gratefully moving on.

"The Olim system?" Pythie asked. "It's in the far nebular nomadic range of the Maclovar trench."

Pythie spoke for the group, save Nyroy who had the entire galaxy mapped in his head, when he said, "Huh?"

Leia smiled if only for its own sake. "It's really far away and no one particularly cares about it outside there. The system is small, primarily functioning as an academic colony. And as such, known as slightly eccentric. They've been avowed pacifists since before the Empire, part of why they never joined the Old Republic. That; and of course, it was easy to stay out of the thick of things at the edge of the galaxy," Leia said slightly ruefully.

"And what about them?" Padme asked, "Are they infected too?"

Not as far we know," Leia answered, "but they may have technology, medicine, practices that can help us with this. One way or another…it's our last hope." Leia truncated her statement hearing echoes of the past.

"That's good," Nyroy said until Leia held up a hand to cut him off.

"Only, we haven't heard from them in three days. The treaty was for one of their royals to marry one of the princes from the system of Dusk in the Bralefon Arm Cluster to codify the arrangement. It's weird and archaic but that's how they do things. Both systems still employ constitutional monarchies that the populaces embrace." Leia sat down again and looked around the table. The team looked at her waiting for the point of the political machinations that seemed trivial at best. "Okay, I need you all to go to Olim, get their princess, and whatever else she has to offer, perhaps technically, they don't exactly have a military, and bring her to Dusk for the formalities and informational necessities and just wait for further instructions."

"That's it?" Padme stood up and burst out, "You want us to fly to some pretentious academic colony and get some pampered royal, sorry mother, to her pampered prince while the galaxy is in massive crisis?" Her sheer disbelief actually helped contain the anger boiling inside of her. Padme wondered if this was her mother's trick to protect her, to keep her out of the fight. Leia stood to face Padme's appalled state with her own indignation.

Leia was the only one who could cow Padme, even standing a couple of inches shorter with her sweet, almost grandmotherly air at this point in her life. "Listen, you have a royal title yourself, Princess, and haven't been exactly denied anything because of it. You'll treat the courts and their emissaries with respect and you take my orders, Colonel, as your Supreme Commander, is that clear, Officer?"

Padme demurred to the one person in the universe she would, "Yes, ma'am," she said and sat down defeated, arms folded.

Leia dismissed them all from the room, thanking them for their service, but called Padme back to speak with her privately. Padme assumed it was to rebuke her insubordination, but Leia cut her off before she could say anything. "Sit down, Padme," Leia said and sat down next to her. "That's not all. I want you to go to Dagobah first."

Finally, Padme's sense of duty was overwhelmed by this last, insufferable insult to her desire for meaningful action. Padme stood up leering at her mother. "You just want to get me away from the danger and take him with us!"

Leia stood up to face her daughter with authority, "No. It isn't that. You'll need his help."

"His help, his help?" Padme repeated as a mantra finally having reached the end of any self-restraint and headed towards the door. "Why would he help now? He's a grouchy…" Padme stopped speaking deciding not to use more colorful language about her uncle and mother's brother.

Leia stood her ground but spoke loudly after her. "I'm ordering you. And you respect him as your uncle and for what he has done for all of us. This isn't all about your agenda, Colonel. If you want to keep your rank…" Padme turned on her heels exasperated.

"Fine! But you know as well as I do he isn't going to teach me or anyone how to defeat this. I think he's made that clear. He doesn't care. What's he going to do? It's just wasting time. Shouldn't we just leave him alone the way he wants anyway? What if he ends up needing help himself? I swear he's not all there sometimes, a little loopy," Padme said pointing to her own head, "I don't need _his_ help."

Leia looked at her with some sympathy, wishing Padme might find a little warmth in her heart for her uncle. "I got your point. Loopy runs in the family. He doesn't have to _show_ you anything. I just want him there to help _you_ out if it gets really bad."

Desperate to get out of the room if only to get on with her fool's errand, Padme threw up her hands. "I'll do it, but I don't have to like it. I don't have to like him. You can't order that. You said yourself, I think in some campaign or speech, the mind is free if we choose it to be."

Leia, somewhat defeated, if amused, by Padme's last statement, approached her and put her hand on Padme's shoulder. Padme pulled away but Leia persisted and Padme just folded her arms and looked away as her mother tried to give her a hug. "He is a great man and my brother. I've given C3P0 a message to give to R2D2 for him. I want you to make sure he gets it. He's earned respect for his choices. I think there's wisdom in them."

Padme looked at Leia, some little girl sadness in her eyes. "I wish Uncle Luke were more like you. I wish I had my…" Padme trailed off for a moment.

Leia smiled to herself and said, "Your uncle _is_ like me, it's just variations on a theme. You know, loopy."

Padme smiled and shook her head. "No, he's not like you. I don't understand why Obi-Wan and Yoda trained him and not you. You're strong. He blathers on to me about compassion and serenity. Yeesh, from someone who blew-up battle stations… Without you, there would be no Alliance," Padme said.

Leia took Padme's face in her hands and kissed her forehead. "Without him, there wouldn't be an Alliance. You're parsing points. And as for the blathering about compassion and serenity, well, that may be the point you're missing and why he's not training you or anyone. The Force is something other than power. You need to understand that. Blowing up a battle station wasn't the essence of the matter." Padme nodded compliantly to her mother who knew full well, her daughter didn't understand one word she was saying.

 **On Dagobah**

Luke Skywalker had passed it a thousand times as quiet daily life gave him cause to stroll by. It was the dark cave where he had failed in his test with the Dark Side of the Force with his training with Yoda so long ago, or at least it had seemed a failure at the time. As the years had drawn on, seeing his own face is in his father's helmet had in fact seemed quite the point for any young man, if his father did truly fall into the category of "special." Yoda had most likely intended Luke to see his own peril. It was a wise warning, one that gave him more knowledge than how to use a light saber or manipulate weak minds and matter with his own will. Still, Luke had come to wonder what his own will was really and not Obi-Wan's and Yoda's. The Empire did have to end, but had he in some way been sacrificed to this goal at birth? He was perpetually trying to push back the question; did sacrifice have meaning when not truly self-chosen?

With time and the course of the celebrated but harsh years etched in Luke's face, and a remote look in his still sparkling blue eyes, he couldn't help but wonder without the weight of his fate, this access to power and the sins of the fathers, how he might have been defined more from within, by his own spirit, and not from the pressures without. He might well have been a worse man, never having tread on death's ground, the place where one decides what one will be in the face of all being lost, but who else might that have been? These things began to haunt him over time. All the praise and adulation in the galaxy sometimes seemed for someone other than himself. His affections, his own human desires, his attachments, had all been shaped to serve a larger purpose. Still, somewhere in there, like his father before him, his own humanity had been lost if in a more praise worthy way and he felt the loss of it as his own life drew on and the bloom of youth faded. If his father embraced the dark and became it, Luke had embraced the light and became it; but the lingering of Luke's own humanity, the dark and light in an ephemeral dance with the brief connection to others in time and space, seemed just a shadow dance in the legend he had become for so many. He was a myth in his own time, but not to himself. This idealism of him and what he could do only created a wall between him and others. His sister and Han Solo knew him. They knew him when he was young and dumb, if not a redundancy, and this felt more real than icon someone whispered under their breath as he walked by. And Han was long lost and Leia had her turn in the fate of the galaxy. This wondering lingered in his thoughts of what might else have been had they all been free of loss, and the carelessness of not seeming so important to others. But he also knew there was something dark in that wondering.

R2D2 passed the cave in back of Luke, whistling a sound wary of the dark place, but Luke was unconcerned. The cave had always been there, he learned to like it being there. Yoda might linger at times with his corporal image illuminated by the Force, visiting Luke, but Luke had mostly ignored the Jedi Master when he returned. Luke was neither rude nor impudent as he had been as a very young man, merely not wanting of the company, any company regardless of who it was. Finally, Yoda only appeared at times briefly, not speaking, with sympathy and some sorrow for the last Jedi, alone but for a squat droid.

Finally, one day in the mist while Yoda appeared to sit in his ethereal flow upon a log felled long before even he was born, Luke sat down with him and smiled. Yoda had been waiting for him.

"This, I wanted not for you," Yoda said with a hint of mirth. He had wanted to train Leia. She had greater resources to work with and a firmer foundation to start from. It was Obi Wan who longed for Luke to be the apprentice to redeem. Obi Wan had fought long with Luke's Uncle Owen about training Luke in the Force and telling him the truth about his father and mother. But Owen prevailed mostly not upon an argument and course of reasoning, but a desire for his nephew, not of his blood, but essentially his adopted son, to be left to a normal life. There was a deep river of compassion flowing through this and the existence of Owen's wife, Beru, slanted all in Owen's favor. Luke had a mother figure with Owen. The Jedi order had long lost the notion of maternal love in its monasticism. It was their ultimate undoing. So, Obi-Wan, old Ben in the desert, just gave watch and protection per Owen's wishes, until that no longer mattered. Leia's world was destroyed. It would be Luke to carry the torch, or bear the burden, depending on perspective.

Soft drizzle permeated the air as Luke sat down to observe a multi-legged lizard retreat into its watery hole, the animal oblivious to all the seemingly important intrigue about it in the galaxy. It had things to do, bugs to eat, and eggs to lay. Luke wondered to himself, for he was his own company for the most part, if the whole point wasn't at all to get beyond this primordial creature's existence, but more plainly, simply bear witness to it all. The light had changed on Dagobah some. The planet had shifted ever so slightly and while the sun was brighter, it meant that much more life exploding on the planet. A deeper canopy diffused so much light, it was difficult to see the edges of things, and the moister grew thicker and harder to breathe. Luke wandered a painterly world of soft colors and no shadows.

When he ruminated like this, he had driven his fiery niece, Padme, nearly mad wanting to understand how _to_ _use_ the Force, and he just became annoying to young people seeking his counsel. But they wanted to know certain things and not others. They already had the stories etched in their brains. Nothing for Luke to tell them there. They knew his story better than he knew his own. He longed for quiet and peace. Human connection had been invaded by history.

R2D2 stopped dutifully in back of Luke, unchallenged with any tasks other than to watch his longtime master. The moisture from the air coated both of them. Luke had stopped wiping the condensation away as the endeavor ended up being quite futile. Before his hand drew away, the moisture had collected again on his brow. He coughed as the moisture settled into his lungs. None of this really mattered to him. There was something seductive about letting go and being a part of the nature occurring around him. So long had he worked to change the way of things, to control nature, the power and connection of living things, he wondered if in the end it he was really who had been changed and controlled by the rest of it.

Yoda had come yet again and sat plaintively at the edge of a waterhole, using his walking stick to create ripples in the water as if to amuse himself expecting no interaction from Luke. Of course, the water didn't actually ripple. "Why you distant so, this time all? No company, no solace you seek?" Yoda inquired of Luke who was well aware of Yoda's presence, but did not acknowledge it.

Luke laughed to himself for a scant moment and then looked over that preternatural green presence of his former master. "Why not?" Luke said.

"Hard question to answer when put such," Yoda yielded back. "Dead you are not yet, Skywalker," Yoda said plainly. "Once young and full of fire, now, no fire. Why dwell in this place alone? So solemn. Not which I wished for you," Yoda said shaking his head.

"Why did _you_ live here so long?" Luke asked a bit ruefully.

"To protect the future, to protect you and yours. There was danger about at my time, for the young. The young are not enough as _you_ retreat away into the dimming light." Yoda looked over at Luke with a kind of sadness the destruction of the Jedi, the catastrophe of the Empire, had not so deeply caused in him. Death of the spirit incurred a kind of grief that the death of the physical being a soul can bear. Luke was dying in a way even his father, Anakin Skywalker had not. His spirit was withering away, neither light nor dark, just sad blue eyes in the mist.

"So, I should train them, my crazy niece, in the same ways, so all the same can occur again? Over and over again? What is the point if it is all repetition?" Luke looked over at Yoda with just a hint of affection for the old Jedi.

"Not, I said. You see well not to indulge youthful ambition, much as your own. I would have had not been dire need so," Yoda looked towards the cave, making the admission that kept Yoda there with Luke, long after the Empire and the Emperor were gone. Obi-Wan never came. Luke grieved him now in away his dying did not. Yoda moved slowly towards the cave not looking back at Luke. "We are but vibrations in the music of the Force. You not done are yet your sound. There is song in the scheme of things." Yoda slipped into the cave with Luke watching.

A brief moment of regret disturbed Luke's determined ruminations as he looked towards the cave where Yoda had been and said, "Wait, I…" but the shimmering visage had moved on into the darkness Luke could not see beyond.

Luke got up, noticing new aches and pains in his joints in the cold and damp. "Come on R2, let's go back to the hut," and he waved for the droid to follow. As Luke and R2D2 moved into mist away from the forbidding cave, a young Anakin Skywalker walked out of the darkness, in his young visage, but eyes as old time, looking sadly on as Luke Skywalker passed into the gray misty light before him. An extravagantly beautiful woman Luke would not have recognized put her hand on Anakin's arm and pulled him away.

"Now is not the time," she said to Anakin, and drifted back into the grayness as if dissolving into it. Luke looked back for a moment, sensing something, but seeing nothing, and continued on.

 **Towards the Past**

Padme sat at the helm of the small ship carrying her crew and C3P0, an awkward and unwanted addition if ever there was one. Nyroy sat next to Padme as Ursula tortured C3P0 in back of them examining the droid's design. C3P0 protested to no avail. He was a classic, he couldn't deny that. Pythie slept with L3L5 hovering over him like a nanny. Nyroy looked over at Padme who seemed unusually remote. "So, let me get this straight, we pick up the legendary Luke Skywalker, the uncle you really don't like, then we got to Olim to pick up the bride and drop her off to the reluctant groom. That's the mission?" Nyroy said smirking. "Glad I joined the service."

"Yep, that's it," Padme replied looking out into the vast expanse of space.

"Your mother is weird, not offense." Nyroy volunteered with no provocation.

Padme smiled. "None taken and you can say that again. I may have to take orders from her, but no one says I have to vote for her again. I think she's getting a little senile. Or more, just her…" Padme and Nyroy looked at each other with political concurrence - if they got to vote again. Just then Nyroy spotted an anomaly on his monitor and indicated it to Padme. She turned on her headset and spoke in authoritative tones, "This is Lyric Shoals 559 of the New Alliance. Identify yourself, please." The "please" at the end was quite forced but required protocol.

Only white noise met her response. Nyroy checked his instruments for information but nothing read clearly. "I can't identify any of the coding from the ship. And I'm good at that," Nyroy announced without humility then looked over at Padme with concern. A high-pitched tone permeated the speakers of the ship hurting all their ears but C3P0 who was finally able to pull away from Ursula checking under his hood.

A demented voice crackled through the distorted transmission. "I am death. Death is the only way…" Pythie entered the cockpit after hearing the strange noise.

"I would have to disagree with that, the way to what? It's indirect," Pythie said leaving Nyroy to wonder if Pythie had developed a sense of humor or was just making a statement. The transmission cut out as the small strange ship came plunging towards them in what seemed an interstellar version of "chicken." Nyroy steered the ship to avoid the impending collision as Ursula, C3P0 and L3L5 crowded the cockpit to see what was going on. The foreign ship turned to make another suicide-homicide run at them.

C3P0 for many years had lived a comfortable and useful life as protocol droid in the Capitol. Suddenly, the elegant if nervous droid was thrust yet again into explosive and dangerous battles that had been properly stored in memory banks, where his programming assumed they well belonged. "Oh no, there's been no insurrection in this part of the Galaxy since the Empire fell. Doesn't the pilot know? It's been well broadcast," C3P0 stated the obvious to Padme's annoyance.

"Well, if he's determined to die, we may as well help him out with that," she said and looked at Nyroy and Pythie who nodded unaffected concurrence. The small foreign ship made a seemingly impossible forty-five degree turn in space and plunged again towards the now evading Lyric Shoals.

The painfully high-pitched transmission came through again, and then the seemingly possessed voice came through again but with fear, "The disease, the disease, the thing, the not thing, make it stop…make it become…"

Nyroy blew up the opposing ship moving faster than even he had calculated for. The blowback rocked the Lyric Shoals. "Okay, then," Nyroy answered the now deceased adversary somewhat shaken by his own miscalculation. "Not to be rude…"

Pythie looked down at the data display without the relief that their escape might have inspired in him at another time or place. "How does a small ship out here have that infection or whatever it is?" he asked not expecting an answer. Nyroy looked over at Padme, honestly wondering and concerned if she could lead them, beyond her great military talent, in abstract issues she lacked a certain depth. It never mattered before in all their easy, ordered missions.

"They could have been trying to escape the Raladan outbreak and then the thing got to them," Padme said.

"Those weren't Raladan markings, and what were they a part of? It doesn't make sense," Nyroy said. Padme looked around for her sickly sour candy goo and grew frustrated when she couldn't find it. L3L5 found it on the floor and flew it to her with the android beeping admonition about a human eating candy off the floor. "I don't think that's our biggest concern right now, L3L5," Nyroy said.

Pythie looked out towards a distant green dot in space before them. "Well, it doesn't matter much. There's Dagobah. I've always wanted to meet him. I'm genuinely glad for this opportunity, Colonel Solo."

"Prepare to be disappointed," Padme said as if stating a command.

Nyroy smiled at the prospect of getting under Padme's skin without threat of insubordination. "Don't let her upset you, she has family issues," Nyroy said turning to Pythie who wasn't quite inclined to play Nyroy's games and straightened his back.

"He has reasons for not teaching the ways of the Force, perhaps we just can't understand," Pythie protested, "Luke Skywalker still is a great man that has allowed for the New Alliance to exist, and for us not to live under tyranny and repression." Pythie sincerity stated without a trace of irony.

"Yeah, whatever, he's still bugs me," Padme replied rolling her eyes as she rolled the ship into the atmosphere of Dagobah at a steep angle, bouncing the crew about for the simple joy of doing so.

 **A Call to Life**

The Lyric Shoals managed to gracefully land on Dagobah where other ships had failed before in the dense, charged-mist atmosphere before it. If the ship was compact, it was powerful and streamlined, hand crafted to Padme's specifications for both stealth, efficiency, and a personal sense of comfort and even an elegant beauty celebrating flight itself. She often thought about ship design as a possible profession if it didn't seem so extraordinarily uncelebrated even with her great talent for design and mechanics.

Padme was the first to disembark the ship, weapon drawn in full military preparedness. Nyroy, Ursula, and Pythie followed pro forma a little embarrassed. They weren't expecting anything to actually happen. "Hey, come on guys, you don't know what's out her. Stay sharp," Padme ordered with true resolve. Just then she jumped back and cocked her blaster when R2D2 came out from the brush, scaring the droid back with a whiny sound as her weapon discharge immolated the side of a tree next to the little droid.

C3P0, recognizing a long-lost counterpart, companion, mechanical soul mate if one could exist, plunged ahead in the muck of Dagobah to greet the little droid. "R2D2, R2D2 come back. It's us, it's me. C3P0. She won't shoot you, I think..." R2D2 tentatively rounded a large outcropping to see if the situation were actually safe and not some feedback illusion of the little droid's memory chips of C3PO. With sensors aligned to the most familiar golden droid, R2D2 put out the third wheel of its own classic design and moved towards C3P0 with all the speed mud would allow with bleeps of joy and recognition.

"My goodness it is so good to see you R2D2," C3P0 gushed losing for a moment a sense of propriety, especially for a protocol droid, as his circuitry overflowed. R2D2 chirped and whistled with such an effusion of energy. L3L5 flew over to see what was going on. "R2D2, this is L3L5, modern medical droid," C3P0 announced, then leaned over to R2D2 in hopes the floating droid might not hear, "Not exactly up to your standards but does seem agreeable company. Not like you, though."

Padme checked her weapon and looked over at the group of droids, "Okay, enough with the droid love fest. Where's Skywalker," she demanded tersely.

Inside the old hut once occupied by Yoda, Luke sat looking at Padme, Ursula, Nyroy, and Pythie all uncomfortably crowded into the tiny space. R2D2 stood behind a window where C3P0 and L3L5 were forced to look in from outside for the simple lack of space. A poor wood fire lightly crackled in the hearth but was rather unnecessary with all the bodies smashed together creating plenty of damp warmth.

Pythie smiled in his peculiar way and offered his pointed green hand to Luke with true eagerness and admiration. "Sir, it is an honor and privilege to meet you," Pythie said as a young soldier meeting a source of inspiration. Luke did take Pythie's hand kindly, albeit cautiously not exactly fitting well with Pythie's long pointy fingers and accepted the sentiment with understanding of Pythie's enthusiasm if a slight weariness crossed Luke's face suggesting a hint of patronization he tried to hide. So many were inspired by the idea of him, but he was young once too.

"It's nice to meet you," Luke replied sincerely. Padme rolled her eyes yet again to Nyroy's annoyance.

Nyroy turned to Luke with his own hand held out, "I never actually thought I would meet you, it is a pleasure and an honor, sir."

Luke took Nyroy's hand and shook it firmly. "Well, thank you," Luke said to Nyroy and Pythie with genuine humbleness, "maybe not all you expected," he said glancing at Padme, rolling his own eyes. Ursula growled happily and hugged Luke who had to crick his neck back into alignment after the onslaught of unsought Wookie love.

"Nice to see you, sir," C3P0 intoned from outside the window banging his head against the opening.

"You too, C3P0," Luke said looking over at the old droid and smiling in spite of his inward commitment to being depressed all the time. It did take effort to never be happy about anything ever. It almost seemed like a duty to be a little morose if it grated like sandpaper against his essential nature and bothered his niece.

"How exactly do you live like this?" Padme asked trying to adjust herself into a more comfortable position, but just ended up hitting her head on the ceiling. Everyone tried fiercely not to giggle.

Even Luke found the resolve necessary not to laugh and said simply, "You get used to it." Pythie, Ursula, and Nyroy did finally snicker as Padme turned and sneered at them.

Nyroy turned back to Luke, "Don't mind her; she's horrible to us too. I choose to believe it's not personal."

"That's my job," Padme said rubbing the top of her head.

"And you're very good at it," L3L5 bleeped in musical tones outside of the hut the group's surprise.

"Enough out of you," Padme said pointing to L3L5 driving the droid to cower in back of all would-be protectors, C3P0, who tried to evade being any kind of buffer, it wasn't in his programming to be heroic.

Padme, having realized she's was losing any authority she may have had in the orbit of Luke Skywalker's illustrious presence; decided she should get to the point quickly as possible before everyone actually caught on to her. Luke knew her insecurities a long time before, but her troops didn't need to know. "We can hold court later. President Organa has sent us here on a mission. This isn't a social call." She looked at her uncle and gave him a pained half smile, all she could muster knowing she still needed his help and wanted him to keep her secrets even if he couldn't be bothered to teach her about the Force.

Padme's statement surprised Luke. For some time, Yoda hadn't been given to perceiving anything Luke didn't foresee for himself, and none of his own prescience had ever marked much of color or significance of late, just time passing away. Luke wondered what it was he hadn't allowed himself to see that Padme was getting at. Padme continued, "The President would like you to accompany us to the Olim system, ahem, sir, which may or may not now be infected with a deadly disease we don't understand and have no cure or treatment for. This so we can pick up a member of the royal family of Olim, bring her to the Dusk system to codify a treaty with the outlying system that may or may not have technology or medical understanding that would be useful in the epidemic if it can properly be called that. Lots of political who-ha of that sort," Padme said and looked over at Nyroy for affirmation as she covered the pertinent issues.

Nyroy nodded in agreement. "That about covers it for the most part, sir," Nyroy said, "I just take orders," he added. Luke made no reaction, not a hint of a facial tick. The elite group of commandos and the droids just sat peering at Luke anxiously waiting for some kind of response, not unlike people watching a baby sleep, and tried to interrupt Luke's lack of an immediate one as some sort of mystery to be discerned.

Luke just took the odd information in for a moment, and then his brow crinkled with incredulity. "That's an interesting story, Padme," he said with disbelief and a touch of disgust. "If I've said it once, I'll say it again, I'm not going to train anyone to be a Jedi. This is getting very, very old, like me," he said and looked at the rest wondering what exactly they were doing with Padme and why they were acting as sycophants at her behest. He didn't believe a word Padme had said.

Padme just shook her head. She admitted to herself, had she been in Luke's position, she would have thought the same thing. Nyroy realized how the whole situation was going quite wrong and understanding he might actually have more credibility with Luke than Padme, decided to press the case. "Really sir, it's true. We met with the President covertly and saw a transmission from Raladan in the Nardal system. There really is a massive crisis with many lives lost and many at risk. We encountered an infected ship even on our way here. Whoever gets this thing seems to go mad and even become maniacally suicidal and homicidal and just plain, well, bad. You can check our logs."

Luke knew he wanted at some level for the whole strange visit to be just another in a series of strange family disputes he was privy to for too many years. He truly hadn't longed for battle; that was him in another life and time. Only later did it become clear it can be best not to get what one wishes for most. In fact, it might have been the substance of growth itself. When he was young, his dreams did become true, then became nightmares that would never really go away. And his longings now seemed mired in what wasn't rather than what was.

Luke wondered, if true, what motivated Leia to send Padme with this really odd request. He got up and walked out from the hut silently. There was actual hurt in his chest, in his heart, if he knew that wasn't physiologically true, that Leia would put him in this position to say no to his niece yet again. Everything in him said, give Padme what she wants, make her happy. That was his job, particularly after Han was gone, but he knew better. It was in his bones. Leia said she understood. He believed her. He felt it was true. Which of course suggested the situation was actually dire. This wasn't the stuff for Jedi Knights with shimmering light sabers clashing in the foreground of the galaxy. Wasn't this for doctors? Wasn't this the better times? Was something as seemingly ordinary as disease worthy of the risk of the Sith Rising? Without the Jedi, there were no Sith. It was simple mathematics in the end. Hadn't they entered the time of reason where passions and prejudices melted before the cool light of reflective thought?

Padme crawled out of the little hut followed by the others. She chased after Luke. "Is that a 'yes' or a 'no'?" she asked bounding in front of him. "It really is fine with me if you don't want to do this. In fact, it might be for the better. I thought we were wasting time coming here anyway," she added with a touch of sympathy that Luke was confused by. "Of course, _I_ can't guarantee your safety, and the President would have my hide and rank if anything happened to you. And then there's the yelling. You know her temper. I mean, _you_ know her temper."

R2D2 rolled out of the hut trying to catch up with Luke amongst the crush of visitors in the remote world. The droid's straightforward life was getting rather complex suddenly. C3P0 seemed relieved to not have to lean through the tiny window anymore, "Oh dear, I almost forgot. The Princes…The President sent a message. I was to give it to R2," C3P0 said. Luke stopped and turned to look at the damp but still softly shiny droid, no different really than when he first saw him on Tatooine decades before, the droid was a continuous thread throughout Luke's memories. C3P0 inserted the message cube into a panel on a receptive R2D2. R2D2 produced the holographic image on the ground much as was done on Tatooine a long time before, perhaps slightly more aplomb, with Leia looking down, older obviously, but glittering in the new holographic technology, like an angel or a fairy, familiar to Luke now, but with the same ethereal siren song calling from some other place.

The message flickered a bit, Leia hesitated a moment, not fearful, but a touch sad and uncharacteristically melancholy. "Luke, I didn't want to ask you to do this. You've earned the right to live the way you want, and that matters to me. But the crisis has become urgent so quickly I worry I've already waited too long. I'm sending Padme and her team with C3P0 to make sure the treaty with Olim is ensured and the information transferred. It may be our only hope, I have to say that again. Again, I'm so sorry to ask this. I trust you more than anyone. I know you wanted to be left alone and I always want to respect your wishes. The threat is different and we still need your help. Please understand…" Her image flickered elegantly away but seemed to linger in the misty air a second longer than the projection on the tiny droplets of moisture hanging in the air.

Padme looked anxiously at Luke for a reaction. His oceanic eyes seemed so distant she felt a need to walk up to him and slightly shake him. "Hello, anyone there?" she asked but stepped back when he looked at her like she was a ghost. "Are you all right?" Padme asked him sincerely. He looked over at the perplexed and blissfully naïve group around him, then back again at Padme. He remained silent another moment as if trying to process the complexities of what seemed to the rest fairly straight-forward information.

Pythie walked up to Luke and Padme feeling that someone should say something. Nyroy looked at Luke somewhat concerned as well. "We will be fine. You don't have to come with us, sir. I think you've done so much already," Pythie said looking to Padme for affirmation. She nodded in agreement with no irony or sarcasm in her manner.

"No, I'm fine. It's all right. I just was very surprised, that's all," Luke said.

"Then it's all right if we leave now? I think we should." Nyroy said. Luke nodded to him if still seemingly slightly dazed. He had been shaken back to life. Something inside of him had sparked again – and he really wondered if that something should be let forth. It was supposed to be a new time, he belonged to the old times. But he remembered his aunt once saying to him as a boy, just so off-handedly, there really is nothing new under the suns.

Padme and Nyroy moved towards the Lyric Shoals quickly with the rest of the team following. Nyroy leaned over to Padme so only she could hear him. "You're right. He is a little weird, are you sure he's okay?" Nyroy whispered in Padme's ear.

"I told you so," she whispered back not at all happy at being considered right about the situation finally. She took Nyroy's arm as he was about to enter the ship's hatch and whispered to him again, looking back to make sure they couldn't be heard. "I don't want anything to happen to him," she said to Nyroy with a depth of concern he was not used to.

"All right, I understand," Nyroy said without the usual swagger or banter. "He is your family," he said to Padme with real empathy. Just for a second, she showed the weight of what that actually meant for her. Her bright brown eyes seemed to see another place and time. Nyroy patted her arm to comfort her; then she batted his hand back like kids playing, returning to their usual bravura.

"Just do your job, grunt." Nyroy half smiled and got on with preparing the ship for launch.

 **Olim**

The greenish-blue orb appeared self-illuminated shining distantly. Olim was a wet, dense world dripping with gooey life in any space a spec of DNA could wiggle itself, between cracks and crevices to puddles of arsenic-laden, moldy soup swelling up to meet the environment. The lack of dry land had discouraged the first potential settlers to the far-off, if even farther far-flung world. Many years later a small colony of academics, mystics, artists, self-described intellectuals, and misfits decided to set out and create a community of their own design, imaginative as it was, in a generous descriptions. There had been a joke, the galaxy had been temporarily tilted and everything loose fell on Olim, but the allusion had substance in theme. The remote planet suited the pilgrims' purpose having full potential for self-sustainment. The closest thing to dry land were high swamps an adult could walk in knee-deep, but many of the original settlers were lost to the indigenous population of hungry creatures in the teeming waters who took some time to realize these people didn't taste all that good. Slowly, both managed to live in their own space, epicurean or not.

Most of the buildings on Olim's habitable region were raised above water level and made of marble and stone to resist rotting and damage during the rainy season, which was most of the sidereal orbit period for the planet. There had been a learning curve in the wet world, but the population grew accustomed to the ways of the place and learned to live in harmony with the low hanging trees working the architecture to accommodate it and flow ascetically with the surroundings. What might have been ugly in another place somehow looked elegant on Olim. Pools and puddles were allowed in the middle of building floors to merge with the planet's ecosystem rather than fight against it. The sky was often dark and cloudy and the colonists over generations became fairer and more adapted to the particular environment; finally, all ending up with the same strawberry blonde locks and pale almost iridescent greenish eyes. For outsiders, they seemed quite exotic and even beautiful; to themselves, this was how ordinary people looked. Green eyes were viewed as dull and the occasional brown pair that sprung up in the gene pool were held in the highest regard. Padme would be considered a goddess.

The trees hung heavy teeming blooms and boughs, long branches elegantly arched down, flexible for the weight of dark flowers and drizzle. There was a constant sway with wind and water, gently undulating, constantly, rocking ever so lightly a lulled and contemplative state of being. Newcomers, unaccustomed to the billowing gloom and its subtleties could grow quite depressed at first. But there were no suicides on the planet no matter how far into despair one had fallen, it was simply too fast and too much effort to affect any kind of violent.

Olim functioned primarily as a giant university and depository of obscure information for those that might have the means and/or desire to travel there. If the planet's culture was a bit rarified and cloistered it was by eccentric design. Most of the inhabitants made a point of staying just that way with some degree of self-consciousness about not being self-conscious. A few more venturesome sorts with actual degrees left to study on far off systems at some point in their lives on Olim, but usually came home to the high tax planet with no means for collecting the taxes. There was the formal precept of pure socialism, the rather severe realities of a capitalistic black market. The travelers would come back with tales of primitive and parochial places, and this did little to entice even the young to leave unless they absolutely had to for advancement purposes, or their families really, really needed the money. Most weren't inclined to travel light years to visit places they could just as easily study at home in relative damp comfort. Great buildings dotted the swampscapes, towers poked into the often-low hanging clouds amongst the city in a grand design to inspire contemplative thought of what's beyond and what lay beneath and other such profundities while staying just put. On Olim, thinking was considered much the same as doing and as such, little got done.

For travel through the marshy city, some citizens preferred to just trudge through the water, seeing that as a type of risky, naturalistic behavior in a culture not accustomed to real risky behavior; they did risk a nasty bite from some stray marsh dweller lost in the city, but after a certain age, most inhabitants preferred shoes that would float the individual above the water, and finally others took to more comfortable rafts, some ornate, some utilitarian, to avoid balance issues with the advance of age with floating shoes and questionable centers of gravity.

The Lyric Shoals came in for a landing on Olim's vast landing plaza, but the causeways and little boats to greet tourists and traders were empty. All the people appeared to have vanished in some great hurry, personal paraphernalia strewn about the many buildings' steps or just floating in the languid water about the space port. There was no one present to greet the ship, not even a note of being late. Either the Olimites had vanished or retreated to someplace else at such a rapid pace as to not take note of incidental order, or something aggressively bad had simply dragged them all away into darker imaginings.

Padme stepped out of the Lyric Shoals, her weapon drawn, followed closely by her team. A murky haze cleared with a swirling breeze revealing the deserted enclaves. Creatures chirped and moaned in the distance, but even as alien as they might have been, their sound was laced with a kind of dread and despair that sent chills up the spines of even the seasoned commandos. Luke and the droids followed out in back of the team. Luke was agitated by the stillness and something else.

Nyroy looked around trying to discern exactly what the situation was. "I had a ton of life readings, but nothing specific. I don't get this place," Nyroy said, "They were supposed to be expecting us. At least give us a warning if something happened. It's celestial law."

The group continued into one of the great, ornate buildings with massive colored windows creating a glow against the diffuse, gray light outdoors, all absent of shadows. A light flickered like candlelight in the distance causing the commandos to react as if an entire Imperial Squadron had been called to battle abruptly; blasters cocked, breathing tempered, but then only a dead leaf drifted by exaggerated by stillness and heightened sensitivities. With more sadness than fear Padme, Pythie, Ursula, and Nyroy looked at each other, wondering if the great distance they had just traveled took too much time and, made them too late to do anything of good. The population seemed gone.

Padme looked over at Luke, trying to discern his reactions before asking any questions. He seemed at a heightened state, slightly different than her teams' military training called for. Luke held out his light saber in a preparatory manner even if the device remained in his left hand without activation. A dark glove covered his right, prosthetic hand. "Do you sense something, anything?" Padme asked Luke, "Are any of them alive?" she said with some concern.

"There're here, but scared, and there are others…" Luke trailed off as his glance bounced about. He seemed to be listening for something he didn't hear and holding in something he didn't want to say.

The team moved deeper into a cathedral-ceilinged complex, a rat-like creature ran by prompting an inordinate amount of firepower to defeat such a small threat, while the frightened rodent still managed to get away. Sparks sprayed off rocks and sizzled upon meeting water and bringing it to an instant boil, steam wafting up for an ephemeral display. Nyroy held his arms out frustrated and looked at Luke for some kind of direction, "Are you sure there's anyone here? I hate to think we're here for pest control. Not to mention, we're not very good at it obviously…"

Just then, shrill screeches echoed through the chamber and from every dim corner and rafter. Then after what might have been a breath, a disparate group of tortured, mangled monsters - having once been functioning people - now lunged at them from all directions. Wings and eyes protruded where they should not. Bones and fangs grew outside the varied victims - now victimizers' - faces and hands whose very appearance had the efficacy of weaponry in and of itself by the sheer sight of the disfigurement. If initial surprise was the intended effect, if there was thought behind the movement, elite military reflexes responded to the incursion with acute precision. The grotesque creatures were little match for heavy arms blasting away at them with practiced efficiency. The creatures seemed prone to quick dissolution when shot and blood and unidentifiable fluid spray splattered the room with a putrid smell, the blood laced with an oozing of green puss. The creatures stayed clear of Luke, frightened of the now fully functioning light saber shimmering in the dull light. Padme would not allow the creatures the opportunity to come any closer to Luke just the same, as she fired with complete concentration and precision. Luke let her protect him, if he needed no real assistance.

With her own heightened awareness, Padme surveyed the surroundings, searching for more potential attackers. She batted with annoyance at L3L5, the droid in a wild frenzy to spray disinfectant on the combatants. "What the…cut that out," Padme protested as the droid flew with a frenetic energy ejecting a purplish aerosol to the point of drenching the troops the droid was seeking to help and getting it into their eyes and obscuring their sight for a moment. L3L5 erupted with thin beeping hissing sounds reflective of fear even if a droid wasn't supposed to have feelings.

Angered with himself for not realizing it, Nyroy shouted out, "It's right. The blood spray, it might have the disease in it. We can't just blast them without potentially killing ourselves too."

Nyroy looked over at Pythie soaked in the splatter from one of the doomed and deranged creatures. The green puss was particularly prevalent down his neck and near his ears. "Jump in the water!" Nyroy shouted indicating one of the decorative basins of the building. With urgency Pythie leapt into the still, murky pool causing waves and a splash of water onto the floor driving ripples through the wet covering the whole room.

Padme found herself unconsciously moving away from the droplets of water in self-preservation. Realizing the slight thing she had done, instinctive as it was, she closed her eyes in self-reproach, it was weakness to cower, even at or especially the unknown and small. She was supposed to think of her team before herself.

As Pythie broke the surface of the water, he twisted about, ripping off his shirt, water sloshing about him. Water sprayed around in droplets inadvertently avoided by his comrades. "If it is water born, we've all already got it. We should have been in hygiene suits to begin with," Nyroy said with self-reproach. "We're soft. We haven't faced real adversity. Not since the Empire. What happens if we forget…" No one answered and no one even so much as looked at Nyroy with a concerned, knowing glance – except Luke.

Padme shook her head again, assessing whether she had just killed her whole team and her uncle by a lack of pragmatic, disciplined foresight and basic protocol. Nyroy could wax poetic some other time if they were lucky.

"This wasn't supposed to be an infected planet. They're supposed to have some ability to cure it, some technology," Luke volunteered observing Padme's apprehension with a soft reassurance in his voice that belied his kind nature, still coming through age and infamy, even when it wasn't helpful. "Why else come? Leia knows how to organize and administer properly. Since she was twelve or something…"

"Yeah, I know, I screwed up. I'm sorry," Padme sputtered abruptly cutting Luke off holding her arms apart. Luke tried to approach her with a reassuring hand on her shoulder but she pulled back in a somewhat impish, childlike manner.

"I didn't mean anything…" Nyroy said as he helped Pythie out of the pool, bracing him by the shoulder, "I should have thought…my job." Ursula's moans echoed through the cavernous building. No voice answered. Pythie stood outside the pool and breathed in deeply to calm himself. They all listened for a moment but only a light wind blew through the exposed high openings of the cavernous building. The slight sound was hallowed and lonely. "Then where are they," Nyroy asked rhetorically, no one bothering to answer. "It's rude not to leave a note."

"I wouldn't be in a hurry to find anyone. Our own weapons are suicide," Pythie said with uncharacteristic disgust. L3L5 wailed and sent out distress bleeps and chirps uncomfortably coming close to a human whine at the end of the mechanical dialogue.

Nyroy held up his hand for L3L5 to be quiet. "His weapon cauterizes," Nyroy interpreted. L3L5 twisted towards Luke and flew a circle around Luke's head then settled next to him with a whimpering whistle.

"The practicality of using a light saber is hindered by the fact there is exactly one amongst us," Padme said dryly. Her eyes burned through Luke now and he knew she was thinking if he had trained her, or anyone for that matter, they might be in a better position to survive their current circumstance let alone fulfill any particular mission. She didn't have to repeat the speech for him to hear it in his head about being selfish and not trusting and of course she could handle the temptations of the dark side, he had after all. It had never mattered that he tried to explain it wasn't about resisting the dark side of the Force, it was about moving on into a new time, self-defined, the light was compassion. Padme looked away from him as she saw the self-doubt and a shade of regret in his eyes, the color of his blue irises was dim in the dour gloom permeating the room; but Padme thought to herself they still looked crystalline with a twinkling, if gray luminosity. Yes, he was the legendary Luke Skywalker, savior of the Rebellion, Jedi Knight, but his humanness unnerved her frequently. That there was a person beneath with the usual feelings of want, regret, and hope common to all disrupted the desire for a perfect god figure, a perfect uncle, a perfect father.

It came as something of an awkward awareness, like when she realized her mother was not infallible and other people had fears just like her and didn't make them any less in her eyes even if she judged herself for just the same: Padme finally realized in a flash she had the ability to hurt Luke, not as a soldier or warrior, but as his family, as another person. She pushed back the idea he had isolated himself on Dagobah in part or en totem because of her. The idea made her far too important and powerful in the scheme of things. How could she and her uncle be essentially the same creature as her with fallibility and weakness and basic humanity? She felt afraid at the thought of no certainty in the universe.

C3P0 attempted to get Padme's attention with a tap on the shoulder. She startled and jumped swinging around with her excessively destructive weapon given the situation and pointed it at C3P0. Padme reacted to the realization of C3P0's presence much the same as her father might have to the golden droid years before. The droid frayed her nerves just by its very existence. "Oh, come on! Why didn't you just stay in the ship, you're useless, Goldy!" Padme flared at the bewildered droid wondering if she should just shoot the nuisance machine without any real cause and be done with it already. She paused for a moment, wondering why C3P0 so got under skin, then dismissed the spark of self-reflection as she usually did when such nuisance thoughts arose.

"Excuse me, miss, but I was about to suggest that R2D2, L3L5, and myself search the premises since we are not susceptible to biological agents." C3P0 protested slightly indignant at Padme's unnecessary, if stress-induced reaction. "And what are you going to do if you find anything?" she asked, still agitated. "Report back and let you know if there are any hostages, miss, per protocol," C3P0 replied as if this should be quite obvious to her, which in fact, it should have been. It was becoming all too clear to Pythie, Nyroy, and Ursula that having Luke with them was hindering Padme's focus. The golden droid might take the brunt of her addled anxiety, but her true abilities as a soldier and leader were compromised by her uncle's presence and they had no way of knowing if Luke could make up for the deficit within the group. And they had to assess if Luke was aware of this himself. For the rest, Luke as a man and not a myth had a refreshing aspect. He still had an affable lightness about regardless of age.

"What's going on with you?" Nyroy asked Padme. "You don't lose it over a close call. Imperial Clones are predictable, yes, but they are also smart. These creatures seem to be driven mad, crazy, disoriented," he said more to try and get Padme focused than on anything in particular he was saying. He really wasn't certain if the infected creatures had retained intellect or not, he knew he didn't have enough information to determine anything with certainty, but a pronouncement of such might have been more injurious than helpful.

"You're right," Padme said, "I'm sorry," she directed her apology to C3P0. Not quite able to calculate the sudden courtesy, C3P0 only said, "Oh, thank you, miss, ma'am, sir…"

Luke scanned the room. Night had come quickly and only emergency artificial light was operational. There were more shadows and peculiar shapes in the space by virtue of the hastening darkness than there were before and seemed to only make the already threatening situation more menacing. "You know, I have a bad feeling about this," Pythie said looking around.

"Do you have your hooks?" Padme asked Pythie. Suddenly there was a glint of light in Pythie's eyes and half a mischievous smile. "Yes. Yes, I do," he said assuredly.

They all moved together in a circle facing out as each was aware in the seeming stillness that they were being surrounded from all quarters and watched with intensity. The droids huddled in the middle of the defensive circle. Glances shifted about, each wondering if they were misjudging the situation, but then it came. From rafters, emerging from the pools, and through broken windows, deformed, crazed abominations filled the strange, large space screeching and laughing, none of the things bounding about could be described as one species or particular planet dweller. It was as if their DNA had lost its code, the force of life itself had run amuck, and the living things, whatever they might have been, were degenerating into their own hellish chaos with the torture of primal consciousness of the degeneration ripping them apart as they're bodies became something unconnected to the essence of their previous being, lacking any kind of order or comfort.

It was with some relief the previous moment of terrible silence had been broken, but the small group stayed in the circle with little individual option. "Let's take as many as we can with us then," Padme said defiantly regaining some of her natural swagger. But the mangled creatures held their ground, just starring at the small, if elite team in front of them. The largest of the diseased creatures lumbered with some difficulty to create their own encirclement around the phalanx before them: negative space for the filled space created by Padme, Luke, and the soldiers now finally testing their mettle, if some of them imagined the joy of hopeless battle, the great existential virtue of the warrior, it wasn't present in true confrontation with imminent death. Their gazes stayed fixed and firm in the moment, pondering nothing.

Suddenly, a giant creature with wings and eyeballs protruding from the webbing at the tips, more than likely never having been there on this creature in its former life. The disjointed eyes looked in different directions, as if at each uninfected person individually, but the eyes lacked any connection to life, looking past prey into a kind of eternal, empty darkness.

The creatures then began to clap and chant as their deformity might allow, as if any patterning or repetition of form was a kind of relief from their torment. It seemed the massive winged thing with extra eyes dangling about was the champion of the horde and the unnatural grouping waited for the sport of some single challenger. The machinations of unordered limbs, wings, and fins trashed about in a pool of light from the planets extremely near moon.

"They want a fight?" Nyroy said perplexed by something so ritualistic in a mass of flesh so misshapen. Padme glanced at Nyroy with agreeing eyes, "Yeah, does the winner actually get something though?"

"A lovely trip to Alderaan," Padme said with mirth. It had become common in the vernacular a generation removed, to wish someone will was to wish them to Alderaan. Luke grimaced at the comment as most of his generation did, but he did see the slight half smile on Nyroy. The young people bonded on their little jokes and made up references that were de riguer for a moment, then absolutely absurd the next.

Luke held out his light saber, the greenish glow of the beam reflecting in the misdirected eyes on the wings of the heaving champion seemingly following some instinct. As Luke stepped forward to take on the Goliath creature; Pythie jumped over Luke to enter the monster's immediate circle with whiplash speed that took even Luke by surprise. Pythie's acrobatic grace rivaled that of any Jedi assisted by the Force, but his came from merely discipline and strength gaining Luke's admiration.

Two hooks, Pythie's Pulsar hooks, aligned in each of his long, exotic hands seemed not much against the beast nor particularly compelling compared to Luke's light saber. Then Pythie swung one hook in the air and caught it with the other. With balletic grace one hook charged the other creating an electric arc of some provocative strength.

"I've got this," Pythie said without taking his eyes off of the distorted archangel of hell and night. Pythie had trained to be on this ground, the place where there was nothing left to do but fight. He was in that place, that moment, and he wasn't going to back down from it. There was a kind of extreme peace in the feeling of doing exactly what one is meant to do.

Pythie swung the joined hooks, connected, but swinging to intensify the spinning force with archipelagos of charged plasma creating an odd burning smell from the mold in the thick misty atmosphere. If the large creature and those arrayed around it seemed indifferent to the threat and any recognition of life, the musical elegance and speed with which Pythie swung the pin-prick pointed hooks over and under him without hesitation or stopping did manage to cause latent concern to spring forth amongst them. Further accelerating the velocity of the deadly weapon, almost preternaturally moving from the sparking charges put forth, Pythie was all grace and accuracy to the disfigurement that surrounded him. The circle widened. While the large, demonic creature lurched back, Pythie's precision evaded the brute force and rage it and the collective had assumed would be enough for so small an adversary and pressed forward.

Pythie slit the multiple eyes of the creature with a precision swing of the hooks easily avoiding the electric arcs discharging through the chamber, as if he could predict where charged bolts would go. The monster moved back making a high-pitched howling noise that pierced the eardrums of all. The sound was of profound suffering, not just the pitch of battle.

The disfigured, blinded thing was afraid suddenly, but the gathering of hordes about it would not let the injured beast move from the seemingly lost match to lick new wounds or old. This event was only about the smell of blood and death. With no aggression in the blind beast, Pythie moved back from the injured, distorted thing. It was no longer on death ground, a match of equals or against something stronger, assessments had to be made, this was Pythie's code. He didn't smite the defenseless. The creature made a sound almost human-like and mournful, something of a lost self it might remember as if in a dream. Abruptly, it lunged at Pythie with the full fury of a blast furnace coming to anthropomorphic life. Pythie spun around shredding the thing to bits in clean precision, with little to no blood spray with his acute, surgical accuracy.

Padme held up her blaster trying to surmise what might come next, it all made little sense in a military context, one with clear goals. She knew they were still significantly outnumbered and didn't want whatever caused the pitiful condition of disfigurement to contaminate them. She wondered if Pythie had won this strange, perversely ritualistic battle where the loser is really the winner. Her mind was not well equipped for this kind of unknown: did the disease instill some code that would allow her team to escape from the deformed menagerie about, or were they all just sinking into an abyss? Luke held a screeching mass of greasy, angry flesh moving towards them all at bay. As Luke held back defensively, they lunged towards the light saber as if to assure their own demise. Crazed mayhem spiraled throughout the room. Pythie was descended upon by horde of creatures with no sense of fair play, only savagery, and as Pythie took many of them down with him, he had little chance to save his own life in the chaos these creatures had become sucking him down into a pit of their aching wrath, their circle closing in.

Padme lunged towards the gruesome pile firing indiscriminately as Nyroy yelled for her to stop. Luke grabbed Padme by the waist and pulled her back from the vortex of violence. She fought Luke fiercely to free herself but stopped realizing the futility of her own ambitions. She had never lost anyone under her command before. She had been awarded by her own mother for just this achievement, another day of safely executing the mission. This had been her friend, someone she fought with, and then, he was gone, and they had to move on from body parts strewn about as one counts or breaths.

A hooded creature in the mêlée moved towards them as the team grouped together and faced out defensively. It seemed less a question of escaping as doing the most damage before dying. Luke had not practiced for years and wondered what skills he really had on call but concentrated on bringing one of the rafters beyond them down with the ethereal nature of the Force. The rafter fell intensifying the shrill noises echoing through the cathedral like space. The loss of the structural support system began a chain reaction as rafters, one by one, started to buckle under the surplus weight shifted to them.

The hooded creature lunged forward to avoid being hit by a beam as it scurried towards the team until it held back with a very logical caution at the advance of Luke's light saber. He pulled back his hood to reveal the face of an extremely handsome, young man, seemingly unaffected by the sinister disease and held up his hands to show he had no weapon.

"I'm Ridge; I'm here to help you." Padme looked him up and down assessing if this were a deception a bit more advanced than that of the demonic anarchy that surrounded her.

"Who are you?" she asked with authority.

"Some of us are immune, I can help you get out of here," he answered as the far end of the building began to cave in and the sickly beings dispersed in all directions, some in the direction of the collapse and rubble. Ridge swung his arms urgently for them to follow him down a dark descending hall. "Come on! Come on!" he yelled. The remaining group followed with the droids behind, L3L5 spraying a mist of muted orange disinfectant in its wake.

 **Into the Breach**

Down the dimly lit hall Ridge led Padme, Nyroy, and Luke running with Ursula covering the rear and L3L5 flying above her. They appeared to escape the crazed gathering if not the imminent collapse of the building above. Ridge pushed at a door that would not have been obvious to the casual observer as the stone masonry gave way to a simple carved out cave. The door would not open without an energy source per its design and the collapse of the building had interfered with whatever generator might have been supplying it.

Nyroy and Ridge both threw their full weight and strength against the impediment but it gave little more than a millimeter almost as if to mock them. Padme waved for them to move away and rolled a shiny grenade towards the door. "Take cover," she commanded although there was little space to do such and they were forced to simply hope for the best turning their back to the explosion. The door did give way, almost as if in surrender for it foolhardiness in resistance to the grenade that was excessively powerful for the job.

Ridge led them down an old set of stairs. As L3L5 passed last through the blasted-out doorway, the ground rumbled with the complete collapse of the building and a dust cloud billowed down the stairwell in swirls containing putrid dust.

Ridge pressed forward then would check back to see if the group was in back of him in the catacomb. "Where are we going?" Padme demanded.

"There are passageways they haven't figured out. I'll get you to a safe place." They came to end of the stairway in a damp and misty cavern strangely lit by a florescent fungus that caused a peculiar blue glow. A river, or perhaps a river used for sanitation purposes, snaked through the cavern of massive stalactites dripping with the seemingly alive blue substance that occasionally "rained" into the underground waterway. Small boats were anchored to the shores of the river, unidentifiable objects collected around them as the water washed by. Ridge turned around suddenly as he came to the edge of the shore and Padme and Nyroy were caught short in their forward motion crashing into him. "Wait," Ridge said as if reconsidering everything he was doing for a moment and examining them. "How much contact have you had with them?" he said with a touch of fear piercing them with his eyes.

Ridge looked at each one of them individually, lingering on Luke for a moment with a sense of familiarity he could not place. They all seemed caught in a frozen moment until Nyroy moved close to Ridge to speak as sincerely as he was capable. "I don't think we have it, the disease" he said to Ridge, "I think Pythie might have contracted whatever it is, but he's back there in…" Padme stepped aside and slammed a fist into the natural wall that caused a spray of little creatures to scatter about, seemingly unthreatening but frightened.

"We're not supposed to leave anyone," she said to no one in particular. "That's not how it works," Nyroy responded, Ursula moaning behind him.

"I'm sorry what happened to your friend, but we can't discuss this now," Ridge interjected. "I'm taking you to a safe place, where the other survivors are. I need you to tell me honestly if anyone of you thinks you're infected," he said with an earnestness that would disarm the most cynical.

"No, I really don't think any one came into direct contact with whatever it is, if it's not airborne, which I'm guessing it's not," Luke said with a certain patience and sympathy he didn't have with Padme or the team until that point, as if he was finally truly joining in.

"And that thing keeps spraying everything with some horrid smelling stuff, it must work to smell that bad," Padme said pointing to L3L5.

"And we don't get biological disease, sir," C3P0 added indicating R2D2 and L3L5 with some slight air of superiority he didn't intend but came across all the same.

"I don't know how much that will help," Ridge said pointing to L3L5 and a cloud of disinfectant, "but all right." Padme looked around for the sour candy she always carried and put enough in her mouth to cause a bulge at her cheek.

Ridge loosened one of the little boats from its pylon and the bottom appeared to charge with life creating an energy pocket between it and the sewage water. He pressed a lever on his boots as he threw off his cumbersome robe. The boots developed the same kind of energy pocket as the boat as he walked on water. "Let's go," Ridge said as he pushed the little vessel along.

All gathered; they floated down the cavern's river replete with lime formations creating an almost abstract kind of art. Even Luke couldn't help but look around the strangely beautiful, foreign world he was in. Nyroy looked at Ridge's boots as Ridge comfortably guided the controls of the little craft.

"I would like a pair of those," Nyroy said, pointing to the boots.

"Sure," Ridge responded, "they're nothing special really. But these are borrowed. We'll see what we have. Maybe something with a little more style." Nyroy almost smiled.

The boat with Ridge, Luke, Padme, Ursula, C3P0, R2D2, and Nyroy crammed together passed under a seaweed-like veil into a vaulted area with L3L5 flying behind, getting caught momentarily in the seaweed curtain. The large cavern they entered had been excavated and lit with portable survival gear.

Groups that only days before had been lingering in classrooms and laboratories over esoteric and existential questions of perhaps dubious merit, and dressed for just such endeavors, now huddled together for warmth and actual survival working on practical issues of life and of nature. The inhabitants looked at the little boat bewildered and some were frightened. Some children ran off screaming. While Ridge was familiar to them, the rest looked at the best bedraggled. Still, undisturbed and continuing to work in a makeshift lab, men and women in white robes assisted by technical droids, only glanced as Ridge brought the boat to the edge of a dock. They got out of the boat and a great deal of space was made for them on the wet stone ground.

An older woman, weatherworn but retaining the angles that had made her a great beauty once walked towards Ridge and the haggard gathering behind him. All of the people of the planet, including Ridge, had reddish-blonde hair with sparkling green eyes. The older woman had gray hair mixed in with the remaining red pulled back into a chignon. She walked up to Ridge and hugged in him in great relief. "Are these, um, them?" she asked pulling away looking at Luke, Padme, and the rest, not so much disappointed but mildly bewildered by what seemed wild looking creatures to her, if not disease distorted.

"Yes, one was lost, but they aren't infected as I far as I can tell…" The old women indicated for some of the technicians to come over and wave vibrating wands about them as if casting a magic spell, but were scanning not for the infection which they could not detect as of yet, but tell-tale signs the genetic malignancy had begun to disfigure them. "They're clean," one announced without much emotion and they left quickly to get back to their work.

"This is Icara Enclyda, Dean of Olim," Ridge said indicating the old woman to his side that he obviously held in high regard.

"Dean?" Padme asked genuinely perplexed by the use of an academic title for a leadership role. Icara looked at Padme and smiled softly when answering.

"On Olim our academic titles are considered more prestigious than our political ones. Technically, I also hold the title of queen."

Nyroy smiled and elbowed Padme in the side. "Yeah, Princess," he chided, "She outranks you." Padme cast a glance at Nyroy that convinced him it was best not to go down a playful path just then.

Padme held her hand out for Icara, introducing herself, "I'm Colonel Padme Solo."

"And you prefer your military titles, I see," Icara said taking Padme's hand. Icara smiled a smile that suggested she had met a few hundred like Padme before, all thinking they were hopelessly unique and misunderstood, and all exactly the same.

"And the rest?" Icara asked Padme looking past her. "This is Major Nyroy, Lt. Ursula…" Ursula growled a friendly noise as Padme indicated her. "C3P0, R2D2, L3L5," Padme said pointing to the droids, "And, ah, Luke Skywalker."

Icara arched an eyebrow and looked at Padme then at Luke. "I don't think this is a particularly good time for jokes," Icara said.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but yes, it is him," Padme said petulantly looking over at Luke.

"Come on, Padme, why are you always so mean?" Nyroy asked Padme almost meaning what he was saying.

Luke held out his hand to Icara who took it with respect, "Yes, I'm Luke Skywalker, this is my niece," he said indicating Padme with the slightest of eye rolls.

Icara stood back with detached observation as a doctor making a diagnosis might, "Familial hostility, that's very interesting," she said.

"It runs it the family," Padme quickly retorted. Luke looked down at the floor, openly disturbed by the remark where others just saw this as a part of his and Padme's standard friction.

"And you wonder why I don't train you out of anyone it the galaxy…strange, huh?" Luke said flatly to Padme. It was hard for Padme to tell if Luke was angry or hurt, or both, she wasn't used to him not keeping her and everyone else at a pronounced distance burying his own true feelings. Luke turned his attention back to Icara and Ridge. Padme looked off into a middle distance of nothing, eyes wide and a bit disturbed. This was something she had never heard from Luke before and the implication of it shook something in her soul she was unaware of.

Ridge took Luke's hand in both of his and stated his admiration much as Pythie had done before, young men meeting an idol hoping to know something of how to live right. Ridge insisted it was not a disappointment for him and that Olim would not have considered union with the New Alliance but for Luke. Icara concurred. Ridge talked for a moment, he wanted to hear stories, to tell Luke stories, then he realized he was rambling on as eyes glazed over as he effused of the study Dr. Enclyda had done on Luke Skywalker and his heroism. Icara touched Ridge's shoulder lightly and suggested they all move on. Luke was slightly embarrassed by the admiration.

Icara brought them to quarters where they could eat, sleep, and change. Luke thanked Icara for her interest in doing a history of him, if he felt he didn't do that much without the help of others and their sacrifices, he hoped that was acknowledged. Icara just smiled at him, a bit like he was a little boy, and said that it wasn't her doing the study; it was one of her daughters, Merine. Luke asked Icara where Merine was. Icara just smiled a sad smile, and said, "Not here," and walked away abruptly before any more emotion might show on her face.

Padme laid in the dark knowing she should sleep as Nyroy snored loudly nearby. It wasn't the noise that kept her up though. Still, slowly exhaustion overcame her and her eyes would flutter shut with images of crystalline stalactites growing before her up and down through damp caverns, the crystalline shapes turning into flames. Across a river of flames Pythie stood saluting her then walking away. Padme tried to chase after him but then was abruptly walking through the mist on Dagobah. It was a place she had been before without much notice, passing a cave she took no note of before and without particular motivation simply walked in, drawing her blaster. For reasons she was not conscious of at all, she called out for Luke but her voice seemed to fade into the damp mist and there was no response. She ran towards the exit but it was no longer there, just a tangle of thorny vines and serpents intertwined. She tried blasting through it, but nothing gave, the serpents grew agitated and hissed at her with an eerie recognition of her in their eyes, almost seeming to say her name. Scared as a child, she softly called for her mother, but again, no voice returned, no response came and she shook as artificial breathing broke the dreary silence behind her and filled her with a kind of dread she had not felt before. Not in battle, not in facing death; this was darker and deeper. She turned slowly with a tear running down her cheek with a drop of blood in it and a reflection of what stood before here.

Darth Vader towered before her silently; the reddish glow of his light saber casting light upon her and causing the gray mist to glow crimson. There was no threat, no call to fight. She simply looked up at the black mask and saw herself reflected twice in dark glass where there should have been eyes, as if she were seeing herself distorted in a funhouse mirror, her beautiful face distorted, like the monsters in the building they had been in.

Padme sat up in the cavern abruptly breathing heavily, noticing she was matching the rhythmic, mechanical breathing in her dream. Nyroy snored nearby. She wiped at the cold sweat dripping down her face and through her hair.

 **The Map Room**

The next morning, sharing food with the seemingly unprepared planet inhabitants for siege combat, they still felt a need to pray and then discuss the chemical composition of the rations, Padme wondered if all her training, her time in the field, made her any more prepared for battle with some bacteria or other mutation. She got up from the floor level table and sat away from the group uncharacteristically withdrawn. Nyroy tried to draw her back into the group with small talk about this or that interesting gadget the people of Olim had developed, he was quite enamored of his new floatation boots and other odd if impractical devices, but she just smiled and turned away. Luke came over to sit next to Padme but she wouldn't meet his eyes. He looked down with hands folded and just said that he was sorry: what he said hadn't been intended the way it sounded. She looked up at him, doubtful this was true. Then with some slight naturalness, they hugged for a moment, then Padme playfully pushed him back and swatted at his shoulder telling him to not get all mushy on her. Luke was relieved she was more herself again.

Ridge walked over to Luke and Padme with his usual earnest eagerness and asked if they were ready for the meeting. The both looked up at Ridge slightly perplexed by the notion of a "meeting" in a critical survival situation. Only to intensify the peculiarity, Nyroy shouted over to Luke and Padme they should come over to another area, they had really good snacks. Ursula groaned agreement. Luke leaned over to Padme and said with a certain liking for these eccentric intellectuals, he thought this was just how their culture operated, it could be useful and they didn't have much else to work with. Padme wondered out loud if their culture actually operated outside of theory. Luke hesitated before granting her she may have a point.

They walked into a well-lit room. Chairs were electronically suspended around a giant map table with interactive features. The city above them was laid out as a bright, glistening hologram that had citizens strolling through the water knee deep, as well as moving in their little rafts, and walking with floatation boots. Icara drew a seat at the head of the table. Ridge was at her side, then two of her technicians, then Luke, Padme, Nyroy, Ursula. The droids hung in back of them much as assistants would to take notes. Beyond then, white-coated workers continued bizarre experiments, one resulting in an explosion of an orange substance and shattered glass. Droids rushed in to quickly clean it up as the lead technician looked over at the group at the map table and apologized for all the noise waving at the orange cloud.

"Quite all right," Icara assured, brushing some glass shards from the map table. She made adjustments to her control panel and time-progressed the image of the city as disparate ships of different kinds descended upon the defenseless metropolis firing at innocent civilians and buildings without much a plan of action, simply violence for its own sake. Icara fast-forwarded through what was obviously disturbing imagery to her of the destruction. She brought the map projection in on one of the city's obelisk towers covered in ivy and foliage that seemed dim and remote from the rest of the city even in the best of times. Icara explained that they were working on isolating the disease, at least to try and create a vaccine if not a cure, but they couldn't isolate a particular virus or bacteria, there just seemed a condition of transferred degeneration of living things, almost something simply, she paused, like evil. Still, many of the people on Olim were immune and they were trying to isolate just what that was about those individuals that made them resistant. Unfortunately, those of them that had contracted the disease knew the city plan, its buildings, and the people. While some who invaded were just ravaged by a nightmarish dream, others retained intellect and cognizance and, in some cases, most disastrously, what had been artful and intellectual gifts amplified by madness.

Padme asked why Icara was focused on that particular tower. Nyroy also wanted to know if there was any point to their initial mission; where they still supposed to bring some princess to the Dusk System. Icara took a moment before answering him, looking down at the control panel but not seeing it at all. "Of course, the New Alliance is still a priority to us, perhaps even more so now," Icara said as if digging within herself to lift her head with some dignified composure. "I have two unmarried daughters. Merine is the eldest and a widow. We thought at first, Iyla, the younger, would be the bride, but certain circumstances complicated the issue," Icara glance over at Ridge as she said this. Ridge looked away from Icara without feeling. Icara smiled a sad smile if intended only for herself and Ridge. "They've both been taken, my daughters, and we believe are in the Heliotropic Tower. I don't know if either is infected, I don't know if either is alive." Icara stopped again for a moment.

Padme looked up at Icara with a renewed sense of purpose. "We can get them back. We just need to get back to my ship." At that moment Ridge and Icara glanced at each other with concern. Ridge was about to speak when Icara cut him off realizing it was her responsibility to take responsibility for what had been her decision.

"Unfortunately, your ship has been vaporized," Icara said to Padme slowly. A giant boulder could have landed in the middle of the room and Padme would not have noticed. Padme's jaw fell and her eyes grew wide as her forehead creased.

"Vaporized?" She asked Icara for confirmation.

"Yes," Icara responded with sympathy. Padme slammed the table and threw herself up from her chair. "My ship? My beautiful, perfectly engineered ship? To my specs, my specs! Every piece of that ship was tuned to vibrate for optimal performance by hand. My Lyric Shoals, my ship! They destroyed my ship! I'll kill every one of those things…" Ridge shifted a bit in his chair and got out a slight noise akin to "uh…" then Icara continued with a slight hint of shame.

"Well, actually, we vaporized the ship," she said. Padme just starred forward at her with a kind of crazed, incredulous glint in her eyes that made more than one of them at the table wonder if she had contracted the disease. "You vaporized my ship?" Ridge finally felt a need to step-up in the difficult conversation.

"We didn't know who you were and were afraid of infection, and we didn't want anyone escaping with it," he said. Everyone in the room, even Luke and Icara, thought best to move back an inch or so from Padme at that moment. But rather than exploding, her lips merely quivered and she sat down and tried to gain her composure.

"Okay, that makes things more complicated. A lot more complicated. As in exponentially more complicated, you understand that, right?" Padme said looking at Icara and Ridge searching for the proper sympathy and shame for her loss amongst more practical matters.

"Yes, absolutely," Ridge nodded and Icara just said how very sorry they all were all over again, starting to sound like a protective mantra.

"That really…is a problem," Nyroy cut himself off before using any sort of expletive. Padme nodded and Ursula moaned wiping away what might have been a tear. Padme stroked Ursula's head. Nyroy asked what other ships they had available and the look of lamentation on Icara's and Ridge's faces didn't change but became even more dour.

"We never actually kept a fleet on Olim," Ridge said and the technicians in back of him nodded as if that might be obvious then quickly got back to work seeing the expression of Padme's face.

"Yes, but what _do_ you have?" Luke asked, "You have to have something for emergencies." He looked at Icara wondering if she was in fact, a doddering old fool.

"Most of the ships we had were destroyed by the, well, the sick ones," Icara answered.

"Do you have any space craft available whatsoever or are we stuck here?" Padme asked becoming impatient with the academic rhythm of the discussion. Ridge stood up and began to manipulate the images on the map table bringing the view to outside of the city into a dense heavily forested area. In the area he was displaying was a building covered in vegetation that looked as if only time had touched it for a hundred years. "We did locate one," he said. "It's an old escape vessel that hasn't been serviced since, uh, I don't really know…"

Padme smiled. She looked around the table and the distraught people of the planet that had vaporized her beloved ship. "You know, I like this. We're outnumbered, ridiculously, we really don't understand what we're dealing with, and are poorly equipped. I mean, _there's_ a meaningful challenge. Right?" she said. "And what choice do we have? We didn't train for simulated combat and the easy stuff. This is what we do. We get the interior plans to that tower thing whatever, find those two princesses, professors, whatever they like being called, whatever their condition, we'll deal, and pick up that old bucket of rust and go to Dusk. Hey, that rhymes," she said with a forced smile that became less forced as she thought to herself she actually meant what she was saying. Then she looked over at Luke. "Is that good with you?" she asked him sincerely.

He smiled at her. "Fine with me," he said thinking this reminded him of situations he had been in before. "Sounds practical and thought out to me."

"And then what," Nyroy asked to no one in particular.

"I don't know," Padme answered plainly, "I just take orders from mom."

Icara turned off the projected images on the table and spoke softly and close in as to not be overheard. "We'll give you the work we have towards an antidote or vaccine, but it's nothing much as yet. Perhaps someone else can find the pattern to it. There are alternate solutions should the outbreak threaten the whole of the galaxy," she said.

Nyroy looked over at Icara with a sudden sense of distrust. He might have been fine taking orders, but he didn't like the idea of a suicide mission he didn't volunteer for. Nyroy stood as he spoke. "President Organa said there were technologies you had that might be needed. I assumed she meant something medical. Is there something else we should know?" he asked Icara in the same hushed tones she was using.

"I will work in accord with your President should that matter need to be broached. I think it is best to leave it at that," Icara said to Nyroy as a diplomat; polite, but cutting off any empathy to his position. "I am grateful that my daughters might have a chance," she said looking towards the empty table.

"Okay, then," Padme said. "That's real enough…"

 **The Heliotropic Tower**

The slick reflective stone streets loomed out in front of Ridge at the center of the city. A few lights independently powered made long shadows and an ominous looming glow to the place. The devastated settlement seemed a sad version of its former self with its abrupt abandonment. The intense weather of the planet increased the rate of natural decomposition and buildings already had chips and cracks where water seeped in and contracted as ice at night and melted during the day. Ever present vines and tangled weavings of leaves reached over buildings as if to warm them. The life of the planet seemed its own heaving force needing to be pushed back as it grew into every nook and cranny available.

Ridge led the way with several of his own friends following after; all trying their best to be battle ready with the few armaments they had available to them. One advantage the Olim inhabitants had was pristine body armor that could actually deflect blaster fire. One of many projects that had been put aside as factional violence in the galaxy diminished over the years, but now finally gave the fifty-year-old inventor a sense of accomplishment after so long as he admired the gleaming suit that didn't quite fit him. But with what the true battle readiness of Ridge and his friends in question, Padme thought it was best those new recruits be the ones to wear the limited supply of advanced defensive gear. She figured she and her team were a little better equipped to actually avoid blaster fire and the monsters seemed to prefer a more parochial approach to death than laser fire. Still, she thought the shiny armor looked imposing and thought hopefully she might have a chance to order some in the future.

Padme, Luke, Nyroy, Ursula, and the droids followed in back of Ridge and his group more cautious in watching their backs than the forward movement through the wet, dark back streets. First light flickered in the sky, and then thunder cracked in the distance. Clouds quickly rolled over what had been a starry sky and rain began to trickle down. While they all remained quiet, Padme leaned close to Nyroy to whisper, "I was worried we wouldn't have enough to deal with. I wouldn't want anything to be too easy. I am actually glad that it's raining. Really, it's just great." She held her hands out to feel the droplets land.

Nyroy smiled and whispered back, "Careful what you wish for. It can always get worse."

"I don't know; if we live through this, we can compete for worst day stories at parties and formal political gatherings my mom likes me attending, and I bet we win," Padme said. The group mumbled in front of them. Ridge turned to look at them and gently shushed them trying his best to be the professional soldier. Padme and Nyroy exchanged exasperated glances.

They all gazed up at the dark tower, a not so ominous spire in its form life, now, a seeming repository for danger and the dark unknown.

There was no resistance, no life to greet them, violently or otherwise, as they walked up into the dim tower which was mostly all staircase. R2D2 and C3P0 stayed at the base of the building while L3L5 floated in back of the group. "Did this building have a function?" Padme asked Ridge as they began the long hike up the stairs only lit by the occasionally slit window. The rain came down harder outside.

"It looked nice here, sort of filled out the skyline," Ridge answered with no irony. Padme just shrugged her shoulders. They all cautiously looked around for any sign of a deformed creature but nothing stirred.

"Where are they?" Nyroy asked rhetorically starring into the dense darkness above him seeming a thing unto itself.

Everyone was breathing a bit more heavily as they ascended up the winding staircase, particularly Luke. He tried not to lag and show his age, but he did feel it. They reached the highest platform without incident or sign of life. L3L5 hovered around Luke monitoring his heart rate. He tried to bat the overly diligent droid away as Padme pretended to stifled a chuckle.

They became silent as their attention was focused by a bizarre sound echoing down the hall. It was a woman's voice singing something strange and definitively off-pitch. "It could be one of the infected in death throws. I've seen in a couple of times, it's sad, but still dangerous," Ridge said.

They all moved cautiously towards the door where the sound was coming from. The atmosphere seemed charged from the lightning outside and a wet wind wiped through the building at the higher elevation and made a hissing noise as it passed. Padme, Nyroy, and Ursula took the lead and kicked in the door with weapons drawn. They made a glorious image in their military precision and strength.

Then, inside the chamber the precautionary efforts made in entering seemed slightly out of place as Iyla Enclyda, an ethereal beauty, sat tied to a chair, gagged and struggling, while Merine Enclyda, her older sister, rolled around on the floor addled in what appeared to be a drug induced stupor signing something comprehendible only to herself. Merine looked up at the entering group and waved. Iyla was breathtaking with long curly strawberry blonde locks and sparkling green eyes. Merine was pretty with similar features to Iyla, but a generation older, but still tending towards childlike cuteness rather than great beauty. Both were dressed finely in embroidered shalwar kameezes with elegant scarves drawn around them, seemingly prepared for a wedding ceremony. Merine wore muted mauves while Iyla was iridescent in emerald greens.

Ridge ran over to Iyla and freed her from her bonds and they kissed as lovers would kiss who had dreaded never seeing each another again. Tears flowed, declarations of love were made and it went on for a moment too long to be tolerated well by the most patient amongst them. Their intensity began to drive towards the highly sexual. Even Luke found himself scratching his temple and looking away embarrassed.

"All right, not completely appropriate," Nyroy protested, "I haven't seen my wife for, well, I don't remember so tone it down, please." Padme just rolled her eyes. Luke tried to help Merine off the floor. Merine had trouble with the entire concept of gravity.

"What's wrong with her?" Padme asked Iyla. "She escaped twice and I don't know what they gave her, I don't even know why they kept us alive," Iyla answered. Ridge held Iyla at the shoulders and asked her if either of them had been infected. Iyla told him she was sure she and Merine were immune because they had been so completely exposed they would have had it by then.

Padme questioned if Merine was actually tranquilized with something or might have gotten the disease and this was how it manifested with her. Padme eyed Luke to take more caution helping the hapless woman. Iyla, Ridge, and his friends all shook their heads. "They get crazy, but never happy," Ridge said. Merine was clearly very happy in her oblivion if unable to stand on her own. Lightning flashed brightly outside and the building shuttered.

"That's right. This building was designed to attract lighting away from the center of the city," Ridge said.

"And we came in the middle of a rain storm. Good planning," Padme said looking at Ridge. "Those creatures have more sense than we do," she said sardonically. Ridge did not care about Padme's scorn. He was too happy to be with his beloved again, electric bolts exploding outside and all.

Struggling with the complexities of inner ear orientation, Merine hung onto to Luke and looked up into his eyes. "You have very pretty eyes," she said to him and then looked over at Iyla. "They're blue, that's so unusual," Merine waited for a reaction from Iyla not at all comprehending that Iyla had just been tied up in a chair and reunited with her great love.

"Ah, yes, nice, indeed," Iyla placated gazing into Ridge's eyes.

"Amorous, aren't you all?" Padme bemused. "L3L5, can you help her out," Padme said to the droid while pointing at Merine. The droid whistled and beeped as it swooped around Merine analyzing her, the motion made Merine slightly dizzier than she already was and she began to sag forward towards the floor forcing Luke to hold her up completely. L3L5 opened a gate in its core, and a hypodermic needle protruded forth. The medical droid stuck Merine into the arm which caused the patient to object to the pain, but she became slightly more clear-eyed and balanced, if only marginally. Merine tried to pull away from Luke, but still had trouble standing and fell forward to the floor with a complete and total lack of grace making a plopping sound. Finally, Luke decided it was easier to pick her up and hoist her over his shoulder.

"Okay, let's go, I guess we go, this is weird," Padme said looking at Merine and walking towards the door. Thunder cracked directly overhead. Ridge, Iyla, and their friends did not follow while the others walked away. Padme turned to look at them and held her hands up. "Aren't you coming?" she asked. Ridge and Iyla smiled and shook their heads. "We have to stay here," Iyla said.

"Merine said she would go so I could stay. I'm going to do that," Iyla said looking up with doe eyes at Ridge. Ridge's friends tried to smile through what they understood was the passing thrall of infatuation between Ilya and Ridge, but even they seemed to be getting sugar sick.

"We have work to do here," Ridge said while getting lost in Iyla's emerald irises and stroking a strand of hair away from her face.

"Okay then, your choice," Padme said turning unmoved, "Let's get outta here. I'm good with the loopy one. You guys be all happy and stuff."

Merine pushed herself against Luke's back, looked up as he walked out the door, and waved to Iyla. Merine was struggling too much to orient herself in time and space to be particularly emotional, but Iyla wiped away a tear and mouthed softly, "Good bye, I love you…" Iyla went up to the doorway to see the group walk towards the spiral of stairs. Iyla shouted after them, "Take care of her, please!"

Padme yelled back, "We'll do our best," while continuing forward with determination and rolling her eyes. Luke turned to look back at Iyla with sympathy, "We will," Luke said kindly. Iyla smiled at him as her lip quivered, but in turning Luke had managed to orient Merine's head so she would bang it into a stone wall.

"Owe, that really hurt," Merine complained. Luke apologized and moved quickly to catch up with the group breathing heavily.

 **Solstice 42**

Padme tried to make out details from the glow of an electronic map while slugging through a marsh as the rainstorm petered out and a hint of a glowing sunrise etched a line across the horizon. Nyroy, Ursula, Luke, C3P0 and R2D2 were all knee deep in swampy runoff. L3L5 had the comfortable position of floating above. Nyroy suddenly thought to turn his floatation boots on and rose above the water with a slightly magnificent quality as he stood even taller than Ursula. "This is great," he announced. Padme sighed annoyance but then returned to trying to read the map. Nyroy proudly stepped forward to do his own grand version of walking on water only to have the boots flail out beneath him and fall head first into brownish, stagnant muck. He struggled to get up from beneath the water with the boots now inverted. The footwear held their energy field above and wouldn't let him lower his feet to the ground. Finally, Padme had had enough and struggled to pull the boots off of Nyroy which caused her to fall backwards, completely soaking whatever dry spot was left on her. She just glared at Nyroy and put the footwear on herself. She managed to not only to walk, but spin and move with the grace of a figure skater.

"Show off," Nyroy complained as Ursula laughed with delight. Padme then took the boots off and handed them to Luke. "You have more of the burden, you use them. I'm guessing your balance is a little better than Nimrod's here," she said pointy to Nyroy. Luke took the boots and enlisted Ursula to aid Merine while he got the boots on. He managed just fine if without the balletic flair Padme displayed and tried to carry Merine normally. Merine was not particularly cooperative in aiding Luke's efforts to help her. They both splashed into the water spraying the rest of anyone with a dry spot. Luke managed to get the boots off himself and Padme through them into the brush.

"Enough with the gadgets. Not all technology makes life easier, you know," she said looking at Nyroy. Nyroy apologized sarcastically. Luke realized he still had to carry Merine when he saw her swimming away muttering something about the pretty water.

Padme directed the group to a dense mound of rotting foliage. "If I'm reading this thing right, this is where it's supposed to be…" she said assessing what appeared to be nothing but a natural occurrence of vegetation. Nyroy took out a single pulsar hook, like Pythie had used, and started to hack away at the vegetation. Padme looked at Nyroy sadly for a moment. "Pythie was teaching me how to use these…" Nyroy said quickly intensifying his labor to reveal the haul of a ship and push away any emotions. Padme, Ursula, and Nyroy pulled quickly at the overgrowth to reveal a really old space vessel.

The look in each of their eyes told the same story, even Luke's. Where they might have expected to find at least a motorcycle, a tricycle lay in its place replete with pink bows and a basket. "Oh, we are so…" Padme was cut off by Merine flailing about trying to get Luke to put her down.

Luke was uncomfortable fighting with Merine in her obviously intoxicated state, but she decided resisting wasn't fun anymore and just looked around saying, "This is nice weather, isn't it?"

Padme showed no more annoyance, just concern, in answering Merine, "It's swell. Get it? Swell?" Nyroy and Luke looked at Padme pained, while Ursula chortled. Merine starred big-eyed at Padme in a complete state of confusion.

R2D2 moved through the water trying to find an interface with the ship, but it was too old to have one. Padme and Nyroy tried setting electronic lock decoders on the hatch to no avail. Finally, Ursula tried to pull at the hatch door with brute strength and howled with frustration when it wouldn't give. "They don't make 'em like the used to," Nyroy said further frustrating Ursula who was unsure if he meant the ship or Wookies and howled. "Don't be so sensitive," Nyroy protested to Ursula who grunted derision.

Padme looked over at Luke with a touch of almost coy vulnerability and said, "Would you mind?" She pointed to the ship and indicated using the Force with her hand. Padme realized it wasn't that he was opposed to helping out with use of the Force but was busy trying to deal with the unsolicited advances from Merine actually trying to kiss him.

"You have very pretty, sparkly eyes," Merine said as if she just noticed him for the first time. "You look like Luke Skywalker, I study him you know…" She poked at him to check to see if he was really there. Even after confirming his corporal presence, she kept poking and had to hold her hand away.

"They'll give advanced degrees for anything these days," Padme said.

"Affectionate, isn't she?" Nyroy observed dryly.

"It's some chemicals, I hope…" Luke said finding absolutely nothing amusing about the situation. Padme had to bite down on her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

Merine, now hoisted over Luke's shoulder, lost interest in her romantic adventure and looked with her head upside down at the ship. "Oh, Solstice 42," she said recognizing the ship through a haze. She pulled herself away from Luke finally and managed to balance herself in the water having some native experience with it. "When I was little, we visited this in history class," she said. Merine turned and pressed on what looked like decorative metal inlays. She pushed delicately in a repetitive rhythm a couple of times and the hatch slid open with solid, mechanical efficiency. A small plume of dust billowed out. She climbed into the ship on all fours and looked around. "This is great," Merine enthused pulling herself up upon entering the ship. Padme looked at Nyroy as Ursula and the droids embarked.

"You know, I oddly like her," Padme said to Nyroy folding her arms, "I'm glad we got this princess."

"You know yourself, thy Princess," Nyroy said directing his statement to Padme, "I say, whatever floats in a swamp." Nyroy climbed into the ship.

"You know, corpses can float in swamps, Major," Padme replied as she climbed into the hatch.

"Negative, always so negative," Nyroy shot back as the hatch snapped shut almost smashing L3L5 as it flew in.

Inside the little capsule the entire group other than Merine had to observe it for a moment in its kitschy historic significance. The ship's lines were slick and elegantly symmetric but unlike any stylistic design used in nearly seventy-five years anywhere in the galaxy. Ursula entered the cockpit and started turning dials and flipping switches without much method just to see if anything worked. The ship began to hum and vibrate as lights came to life. Merine looked around and smiled before falling to the floor. Where Merine had hit her head against the stone wall in the tower, a welting black eye was forming not at all to her discomfort. "Someone help Merry Happy strap in," Padme said as she headed for the cockpit.

"What if we need her help to fly the ship? She's familiar with it," Nyroy asked. Padme turned and looked at Nyroy then Merine as Luke tried to help Merine off the floor as she insisted on kissing him on the mouth. Luke tried to push off Merine's advances while not knocking her back to the floor.

"Then we are in trouble," Padme said sincerely from the cockpit. Luke looked at Nyroy trying to get Merine to sit down while still she hung around his neck like a necklace.

"A little help here?" Luke said, but Nyroy just smiled at him and shook his head.

"I don't know, I think she likes you. Who am I to interfere?" Nyroy walked into the cockpit and strapped in next to Ursula.

C3P0 noted that the design of the strange relic ship made no accommodation for droids; they hadn't been invented when it was built. Luke motioned for C3P0 to be quiet as he listened for noise outside. A scratching sound, like nails on a chalk board, became louder and more pronounced. "What's that?" Merine asked and held tightly around Luke's waist. He decided it was best not to fight her off as long as she avoided anything significantly more intimate.

"Okay, they finally got up, the lazy creeps," Padme announced from the cockpit as the whole ship started to rock back and forth. Gooey creatures attached themselves to the ship's front window and started banging and making preternatural moans. Nyroy urgently worked various controls as the ship sputtered then finally fired up. "Can we get this thing off the ground?" Padme asked Nyroy?

"I do in fact believe we can. I've actually always wanted to take off like this," he said.

"However, just do it fast," Padme said as the rocking became more severe and a malicious distorted face stuck out a tongue in her direction from outside the cockpit. The whole ship rumbled like it might fall apart making Padme and Ursula look nervously at Nyroy who couldn't smile more broadly.

"You better buckle up back there, it's going to be a bumpy ride," he shouted to the cabin.

"You too," he said as Ursula and Padme pulled down extra harnesses from overhead compartments. Padme and Ursula exchanged concerned glances as Nyroy beamed with delight as the rocket propelled engines rumbled. Luke finally managed to get Merine partially strapped into a seat despite her lack of cooperation when the ship shook as great plumes of fire erupted from the back of the ship hoisting it towards the sky.

The gravitational forces of a forty-five-degree launch angle through the atmosphere threw Luke and the droids smashing into the back of the cabin. Merine stayed buckled in for a second but the strap came loose and she went careening back into the pile up at the back of the cabin. The blast from the ship incinerated everything beneath it. Padme, Nyroy, and Ursula were pressed back into their seats as Nyroy tried to shout, "Yeah!" through the multiple g-forces.

The pressure continued on them while Padme complained, "This thing is so slow…"

Finally, the small vessel escaped the atmosphere and the gravitational field of the planet and a calm silence set over the interior of the ship. Along with the silence came the wafting, lilting new reality; they had no gravity. Where droids and people had been mashed into the back of the cabin they were then just floating about with hair and clothes free to do as they would and wandered adrift.

Only harnesses held Padme, Nyroy, and Ursula in their seats. C3P0 made the unnecessary pronouncement that he really didn't care for the conditions at all. Merine seemed to be enjoying it as her hair and dress floated as if in water and attempted swimming motions. "Yep, there's no artificial gravity on this thing," Padme said to Nyroy, "Should I get out and row too?" she added.

"No, I think we've got something here," Nyroy said as he indicated a series of dusty levers on a control panel. He switched them back and forth, remembering the same rhythms Merine had used to open the hatch. The artificial gravity came on abruptly, which made the floating passengers in back crash with a thud. The only oddity of the gravity, which was perfectly adequate for their needs, was that it didn't pull in the direction of the floor. It pulled everything and everyone on a thirty-degree angle towards the stern side disorienting objects that were intended to be pulled in a downward direction. Padme looked at Nyroy with a complete loss for words, but her exasperation was apparent.

"You know, this thing was probably lying on its side for who knows how long? The apparatus must have shifted," Nyroy said almost apologetically for his new beloved old ship. Luke had been aware of the old-fashioned systems for artificial gravity: the spreading of super dense plasma through protected floor layers, but the technology was arcane even when he was young. There always had been alignment difficulties with the layers not adjusting to the density they were supposed to disperse, along with the sheer weight of the system itself. It was like a team of horses pulling a supertanker.

The droids tried to orient themselves in the awkward tilted, confined space and L3L5 flew in circles as if confused as to what direction to go in. Luke and Merine just lied on a wall, which was functioning as the floor if somewhat ajar, and just didn't move for a moment. They were both conscious and aware, but it seemed best to just not anticipate any type change of circumstance at that moment, it would probably change again and they needed to just flow with it.

"I know they injected me with something powerful, but I think it's wearing off now, mostly because of all the pain," Merine said starring forward and blankly.

Luke decided to attempt standing in the peculiar juxtaposition to the interior of the ship albeit quite cautiously, even being a trained Jedi Knight didn't always help with the absurd. "Are you okay?" he asked Merine. L3L5 reoriented itself to the gravitational pull and its primary programming as a medical droid went back on-line. It hovered over Merine in studied examination.

"I really have no idea," Merine answered Luke. L3L5 announced Merine was stable but had swelling of the right eye. This was particularly obvious to Merine and Luke, but the droid was thanked all the same.

C3P0 tried to gain his footing in the peculiar angels with great indignation. "I really do dislike space travel," C3P0 announced to R2D2 who was more than inclined to beep agreement at that moment.

Nyroy stepped lightly sideways out of the cockpit. He and Luke helped pull Merine up who was now wincing with pain and no longer enjoying whatever intoxicant had taken over her.

"There's another thing, it seems this ship's life support systems weren't designed to support quite so many passengers and we have a really long trip to Dusk in front of us," Nyroy said.

"So, we vote who to throw overboard?" Merine asked without irony, seeming to think she might be the one to "win" the theoretical contest.

"Oh no, it's not quite that bad," Nyroy answered. "We're just going to have to sleep a lot and let the droids co-pilot intermittently. It will preserve atmosphere."

"That's really fine with me, really," Luke said. "I'm very tired."

 **Gravitational Lensing**

The interior of the cabin was dimly lit to conserve energy. C3P0 and Ursula sat at the controls as nebulae and star clusters swirled by in grandeur, without the efficiency of a hyperdrive to move the ship along. Slowly, it all became repetitive and laborious. If the space around them suggested the glorious and beautiful, it was a whole lot of glorious and beautiful that the most sensitive of minds might grow weary of in its constancy. Ursula and C3P0, neither having a particularly poetic bent sat quite simply: bored. Ursula yawned and stretched her shoulders trying to keep a modicum of awareness. There was little risk of the ship hitting anything without copious warning at the galactic snail's pace they were moving. Ursula growled noises at C3P0 that he well understood, being fluent in six million forms of communication, and not unassociated with Wookies. "Well, yes, I could say I knew Chewbacca well, so to speak. He did put me back together once. I may have had a few issues with the assembly but it worked out well enough, I suppose…" Ursula growled in various tones which C3P0 seemed somewhat offended by. "What do you mean he said I was a pain? I would hardly call putting my head on backwards a minor repair flaw…" Ursula chortled finding some entertainment in annoying C3P0. "Wookies…" C3P0 bemoaned to himself.

In the cabin, the rest of the team found awkward perches in which to sleep in the unaligned gravitational field. Nyroy snored loudly although it disturbed no one in their complete exhaustion. L3L5 floated above each, including R2D2, as a diligent nurse monitoring life signs, or electronic transmissions where appropriate. Merine groaned and rolled over onto Padme. Padme merely batted at Merine unconsciously in her sleep and reached around for her candy and found a piece to suck on. L3L5 tried to take it away from Padme but realized the effort might not be worth any potential health benefit.

Merine's eyes opened and she pushed herself up with the dual discomforts of bruises and aches caused by their awkward escape including her swollen black eye, and a kind of hangover of monumental proportions from various intoxicants and antidotes injected into her without exacting care as to amount. L3L5 hovered over her and made twitching sounds that could be interrupted as simply sympathetic. The droid extended another hyperemic needle and injected Merine in the arm before she could object. Merine realized she felt slightly better the moment after and thanked the droid quietly. Merine was slightly relieved until she caught view of herself in some reflective glass with the massive black eye. She groaned and looked away realizing she looked as bad as she felt.

Merine walked into the cockeyed cockpit with a simulated icepack held to the side of her face with L3L5 hovering a little too close into her personal space for comfort. Merine tapped Ursula on the shoulder who looked up at Merine and made a groan that could only be interpreted as: "You look awful." Merine nodded her agreement.

"Why don't you rest for a while," Merine said to Ursula looking over at C3P0, "I do know the technology, if you can really call it that." Ursula was tired and got up from her lopsided seat and let Merine sit down ever-so-delicately. Ursula patted Merine on the head to comfort which only made Merine hurt worse but she smiled at the nice Wookie anyway. Ursula headed towards the cabin and tried to fit herself into the crumpled-up group of the sleeping.

Padme reached around Ursula like a giant teddy bear which was awkward for Ursula, but Ursula decided it was best to just deal with it and patted Padme's arm.

Merine strapped herself into the cockpit seat, mostly to avoid falling out of it, and looked over at C3P0. He introduced himself in an accommodating, pleasant manner. She attempted to shake his hand but found the gleaming golden metal made her bruised hands hurt like the rest of her. With the simulated icepack, she could only really see C3P0 through one blurry green eye. "Nice to meet you," Merine responded, "I'm Merine Enclyda…"

C3P0 cut her off with enthusiasm, "Yes, ma'am, Merine Enclyda, Princess of Olim. I must say, I find the culture of your system quite admirable in many respects."

"I actually prefer doctor or professor as title, but you can call me Merine," she said smiling.

"Yes, Professor Merine," C3P0 said to oblige.

After a moment of silence, Merine looked over at C3P0 with some seriousness and said, "I don't remember everything."

"Oh, I have trouble with that myself. Of course, the all those memory wipes never help," C3P0 responded.

"I mean in the past few days. I know I'm supposed to be going to the Dusk System to codify an alliance, and I'm thinking that's where we are going, but…ah, uh, who are all of you, why are we flying this thing, and why is it lopsided?" she asked.

"Perhaps you have brain damage," C3P0 suggested helpfully.

L3L5 hovered in back of Merine bleeping negative indications of such. "I may have started out with brain damage," Merine suggested, "but just to get caught up, where are we and how did we get here?"

"Well," C3P0 began as if trying to retrieve old data, "Princess Leia was smuggling secret design plans for the Death Star when her ship was captured by Darth Vader…"

Merine cut him off realizing the length of the story C3P0 was about to tell, "No, I actually know about that part. Not to be narcissistic, but with me, in the past few days or so. Just me. Do you know?"

"You seem to have been taken hostage by some unfortunately diseased creatures if more intelligent than we previously encountered and Colonel Padme Solo, her team assigned by President Leia Organa of the New Alliance, and Luke Skywalker rescued you." Merine bit her lip and looked off into the distant space wondering what to do. Obviously, this droid was seriously malfunctioning, if not completely ready for the trash bin.

With all seriousness Merine folded her arms and asked C3P0 if his circuitry had been aligned of late. C3P0 took some mild offense to the implication his memory banks were suffering damage, he didn't have a large welt on the side of his head.

Luke stepped quietly in back of C3P0 and tapped the droid's metal shoulder. This startled Merine more than C3P0. "Why don't you shut down for a while, 3P0," Luke said gently.

"Of course, Master Luke," C3P0 replied. The droid removed the harness, and awkwardly walked to the cabin. Merine smiled to herself for a moment; then realized it hurt her face to do so. Luke strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat and looked over at Merine. She looked at him with her one good eye and obviously didn't recognize him. Realizing this, Luke introduced himself causing Merine to reevaluate his face closely.

Her only reaction was, "The droid's not insane?"

"Well, that could be a matter of interpretation," Luke said half smiling.

Completely incredulous, Merine smiled back at Luke and said, "Nice to meet you, Luke Skywalker." Had it been a custom known to her, she would have put "air quotes" around his name. Luke looked down and smiled a little sadly to himself. "Sorry to be any disappointment, I seem to be doing that a lot lately, but I really am Luke Skywalker. We all get older you know," he said with real protestation at the end of his statement.

Merine looked at him again, taking more note of his eyes, and worse than believing he was a mythologized hero throughout the galaxy in the flesh, a flood of memories of her own strange actions in the past days inundated her. "Oh no," was all she found to say and wilted down into the chair as far as the laws of the physical universe would allow.

Realizing she was reflecting upon some recovered memory Luke smiled sympathetically and insisted it was all fine, he wasn't upset or offended. This really didn't matter to Merine at the moment as mortification took complete hold of her and she tried very hard not to vomit which would only embarrassment her more. She managed to slide down out of the harness under the flight console to hide like a child caught being naughty. The simulated icepack got caught on the console and she reached up to grab it and brought it down with her. "Are you all right," Luke asked concerned.

"I'm fine. Just pretend I'm not here," a meek voice answered. "Hey, I think I might be able to fix this…" Merine said pulling a panel out from under the console. She made adjustments to connections and abruptly the artificial gravity pulled in the right direction towards the floor.

Banging sounds echoed from the cabin along with grunts and groans. "What the…" Padme yelled. Merine apologized in a tiny voice while she remained ensconced under the console. Padme and the rest in the cabin simply readjusted their position to the new gravitational dynamic and decided to go back to sleep. "That's okay, at least it's fixed," Padme said rolling over and immediately falling back to sleep.

Luke stuck his head under the console, suddenly realizing he had lower back pain from carrying Merine; he tried to hide the discomfort, somewhat unsuccessfully. He looked at Merine curled into a corner with the simulated icepack acting as a pillow against the wall in the uncomfortably small space. She wouldn't meet his eyes even in the dim light. "Are you okay down there?" he asked.

"Fine, fine, this is good," she answered but found in just speaking she knocked her head on the bottom of the console. The panel she had just reaffixed fell down as if intentionally to add a touch more humiliation. Luke held open his hand for her to take. She hesitated for a moment still not able to look at him. "I don't bite," he assured her. She took his hand and he helped her back into the cockpit chair. "You do, but I don't," he said smiling to himself.

Merine tried to smile and look at Luke but found it difficult. "You know, I'm really not that, uh," she tried to find the correct word, "I have credentials and degrees and, ah, things like that…" she stammered.

"I actually understood that," Luke said with a slight undertone that suggested he wasn't stupid. She apologized if she made it sound like he was ignorant; she insisted she wasn't a snob. In fact, she was impressed and a little awed by him. She had even studied him and had tried to visit Tatooine for historic context but had to leave when she got a serious skin condition from the double suns. She had never envisioned herself inebriated and of all things, amorously aggressive, which was completely contrary to her nature if she should ever meet the famous Luke Skywalker.

Luke tried to pretend he didn't like the adulation, even to himself. She was able to read this on him and play-flirted, batting her one good eye, and said, "But you do have pretty eyes."

"You have _one_ nice one," he retorted not wanting to lose the upper-hand in the conversation. Realizing she did have an extremely unattractive lump on the side of her face she turned forward to look out the cockpit window and said, "Well, I didn't bang me into a wall."

"I said I was sorry, would you rather have stayed?" he asked. The banter stopped when she looked down not saying the answer that almost leapt out: yes, she really would rather have stayed. There was silence after that.

Later on, Merine leaned against the wall of the cockpit with the simulated ice pack now a wet, dripping pillow. She mumbled something, clearly dreaming. Luke rested his head on his hand braced against the console. If he managed to keep himself upright, he still was still drifting off.

Suddenly, Padme stood in between them happily awake at that point shaking her head in mock disapproval. Padme picked up some metal folders from the side of the console and dramatically let them fall to the floor with a jarring crashing sound. Luke and Merine jolted awake. Merine rubbed her forehead with the now exacerbated headache, and Luke tried to get the crick out of his neck the sudden jarring caused. "Fine centuries you make," Padme chided. "What if we ran into something?" Padme asked more for the pleasure of complaining than actual concern they would need immediate reaction to anything that deep in space and at the speed they were moving.

The noise woke up everyone else in back and Ursula groaned in displeasure. Merine apologized threw a dazed fog. "Not you, you're the passenger, but you," Padme said and poked Luke's arm. Padme seemed refreshed and her tone was so playful Luke looked at her like she had been replaced by someone who looked like Padme. Nyroy drew up in back of Padme yawning, "Oh come on, we'd have three year's warning before anything hit us," Nyroy said.

Padme turned her head towards Nyroy, "How long is this really going to take?" she asked. Nyroy hesitated for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. "How long?" Padme demanded as an order this time.

"About ten days," Nyroy answered.

"The entire galaxy might be infected by then," Padme said.

"In that case, aren't we in a good place?" C3P0 asked from the cabin.

"That's not the point," Padme flared. She turned to Ursula and told her to work out something to make the engines sputter a little faster.

Merine pushed herself up from the cockpit chair. "I'm in no hurry," she said and made her way back to the cabin.

As Merine passed Padme she looked at Padme with a kind of befuddled vulnerability. "Who are you?" Merine asked. Padme suppressed a smile.

Luke stood up in the cockpit and took on the air of a true gentleman. "This is my beautiful niece, Colonel Padme Solo of the New Alliance," he said to Merine. Padme rolled her eyes. "Welcome aboard, ma'am," Luke said taking Merine's hand and kissing it the most respectful of manners befitting a royal princess.

"Please, I might get sick," Padme said without any real disdain.

"That's okay," Merine said pulling her hand back, "I'm not sure I'm up to all of this anyway." Merine made her way into the back and all but fell into a seat exhausted.

"Gee, you liked me before," Luke said looking at Padme. Padme looked away from him and got about piloting the ship.

"This is a political and military mission. I wouldn't worry about how your face looks," Padme said for the first time directing some contempt in Merine's direction thinking she was vane.

"Oh, not that, what's the difference?" Merine said with resignation pointing at her bad eye.

Padme readjusted her tone and asked if Merine just hated the idea of getting married to someone she didn't know, something Padme could understand. "What is he, old and warty?" Padme asked Merine as Ursula moaned at the contents of an ancient tool chest she found.

Nyroy looked into the box and said with some regret and some joy, "We are in a museum." Ursula slammed the tool chest down and folded her long Wookie arms in frustration. Nyroy picked up the box and brought down a panel from the wall. "I'll work on it," he told Ursula.

"It's so much worse than that. Old and warty would be fine, that would be good," Merine said. She then glanced at Luke and grimaced realizing how insulting what she said might be to him seeing as she appeared to have found him quite attractive recently. He didn't react.

Merine went through a little bag that had managed to keep tied to one the scarves hanging about her. She pulled out a small shinning square and asked R2D2 to come to her. With gravity pulling downward, the droid realized movement wasn't the problem it had been previously and came forward obligingly. Merine placed the recording into the appropriate slot on R2D2 and a large holographic image was projected of a gloriously beautiful, young man in the cabin. Padme was taken aback by how really attractive the image of the man was and asked while still looking at the hologram, "What's the matter with that?"

The hologram showed Prince Geren of the Dusk System introduce himself and make an elegant and kind proposal to bring together the worlds of Olim and Dusk with shared culture, technology, and art where the combination would be more than the sum of its parts and he hoped his future bride would find him acceptable. The hologram withered away into the ether. Nyroy said, "But that's very nice," to Merine a bit baffled at her horror at the prospect of this prince. Even Ursula shrugged her shoulders.

Merine pushed herself out of the seat and looked at the group collectively, holding her hands apart, baffled they did not understanding her point. "Don't you see? It's too nice!" she plopped back down into the chair. "I've been married, and not to handsome prince person. Iyla begged me to go. She wanted to stay with Ridge. She said it would be nice for both of us; she was worried I was lonely after Ty died. Yes, ten years and she's suddenly worried I'm lonely," Merine lamented shaking her head. "Had I seen this first, I wouldn't have agreed. That poor boy, he has no idea…"

"Well, you're not _that_ old," Nyroy said in a genuinely reassuring manner as he tried to get some wires to interconnect only to cause a small electrical discharge and shock himself.

"I'm different though, and I don't mean that in a good way," Merine said with a touch of wistfulness.

"We already saw that," Nyroy said, "It could be worse." Merine completely wilted in humiliation. Padme actually felt sorry for her and asked Merine what her husband had done and how he died, if only to change the subject. Merine told her he was a scientist. Padme quickly assumed he died in some grand experiment for the greater good. Merine just sighed and told her than he actually had fallen down a flight of stairs. He was brilliant, but not well coordinated.

At that moment, Nyroy's adjustments caused the gravitational pull of the ship to go lopsided in exactly the opposite direction in had been before. They all tumbled accordingly. Luke fell on Merine who had her face smashed against a wall yet again.

 **Urgency**

Inside of Leia's grand hall she sat by herself at the conference table with her hands folded and looking down, almost as if in prayer. There wasn't another soul in the room, not even a droid. A coded series of tones emitted from the crystalline projector at the middle of the table. Leia tapped in her own coding on a control panel and an image of Icara emitted from the projector. The signal was somewhat distorted interspersed with white noise. Even without the distortions, Icara looked more worn than she had before from worry and wear. "I'm sorry it's taken us so long to get a transmission through. It required the placement of a relay transmitter that was sent out when our talks first began," Icara said in the projection.

"I understand," Leia said politely but slightly impatient, "Are you able to update?" Leia continued. Icara was quick to respond with empathy to Leia's question. "Your daughter and brother left the planet safely with my daughter, Merine," she said.

"That's good," Leia responded with a touch more relief than she knew she should show.

"What is the status on your planet?" Leia asked as the transmission became fuzzier and darker.

"We have been able to gain the upper hand in the logistical situation. This isn't a malady that inspires organized, thoughtful activity and it is ultimately fatal. Unfortunately, we are still not able to isolate any particular pathogen," Icara said. There was silence for a moment giving import to Icara's last statement.

"Is your daughter carrying the plans for the other option?" Leia asked not really wanting the answer.

"Yes," Icara paused, "She is. We have had no contact with our ship; it was a last moment improvisation. In our discussions with the leadership on Dusk they had agreed to the alternate solution should it become absolutely necessary but wanted unified consensus. Olim would be in range of the effects…" Leia looked towards the glowing vista of the galaxy beyond and the thin layer that protected her from the hostilities of space.

"I couldn't make that decision without a representative from the region," Leia looked back at the holographic image. "How close are you to isolating even an antigen?" Leia asked.

Icara paused. "We don't even have serotype. I would be making plans towards other…options," Icara said emotionlessly, but obviously fighting back emotion. Leia just nodded. Icara nodded back and neither was sure which one had turned the transmission off first.

Leia called for her special agents who immediately entered the room with breathless urgency despite special training to remain calm at all times. They just looked at her waiting for an order. "Prepare to move the Capitol to the outer rim," she said plainly. With the same anxiousness with which they had entered, they left. It wasn't what they had wanted to hear. One had tears in his eyes.

Leia turned on the conference table projector and moved through images quickly. She stopped at a happy image of herself with Han Solo and Padme as an infant. Then she came to a picture of Luke, very young and handsome with his bright, enthusiastic resonance. Even through a hologram years later, this brightness resonated with her, it had with the galaxy. All their lives were better for him. She passed her hand through the image as if hoping for a moment it would be real again.

 **The Approach of Dusk**

If Solstice 42 hadn't achieved a speed equivalent to hyperspace, it had accelerated to a point where light didn't make pinpoint stars in an elegant velvet black vista beyond, but streams of light in various colors swirled in a fantastic show before the little ship. The iridescent kaleidoscope was viewable from the cockpit. Nyroy sat in the pilot's chair not looking up at the glowing enigma he had managed to produce with some questionable wiring which he felt best not delineate to the rest of the crew. Instead, he looked down at the console repeatedly trying to make contact through the sound of high pitched static; nothing answered him. Padme walked into the cockpit and replaced L3L5 floating in the co-pilots chair. The droid couldn't do much to pilot the ship but substituted for company while the rest slept in the dim cabin in back. "I know we haven't gotten to hyperspace, but I don't think you're going to pick up any transmissions at these speeds, the time differential is still distorted," Padme said as Nyroy continued to speak into a headset.

"It doesn't mean I can't try. I got this thing past galactic docent speed. And what else is there to do?" Nyroy said without looking over at Padme.

"I'm sure they're okay," she tried to reassure him knowing his real concern.

"Yeah, I know," he said unconvincingly. Padme examined the archaic control panel and tried making some adjustments. She then put on a headset trying to make any kind of general contact herself. Nothing came back. Nyroy smiled appreciatively. He looked over at her in gratitude for what he knew was a futile effort to make him feel better.

Lights flickered and flashed on the control console that almost made Nyroy and Padme laugh. The technology was so old it had an almost quaint, comic quality. "I guess we're getting close," Nyroy said. He adjusted controls as the swirls of light slowed into star formations in front of them. With the adjustment in speed, the artificial gravity returned to bottom center again tossing all the sleeping people in the cabin to the floor. "Sorry about that!" Nyroy yelled, "I have no idea why that happened."

"That's great," Padme said with amusement. Ursula howled and Merine just let out a faint, "owe…" As it was, Merine managed to land on top of Luke who patiently waited for get to off of him. Merine tried to stand gently but still managed to step on his arm in the process.

"Perhaps confronting terrible disease may be better than this trip," C3P0 said trying to regain his balance.

"Well, if you're a droid, probably," Luke said trying to get up from the floor without further battery.

"I didn't mean anything, sir…" C3P0 said. Luke just smiled a bit riley and told C3P0 not to worry about it. "I'm not very good at that, Master Luke," C3P0 answered.

"We're coming up on it finally," Padme shouted from the cockpit with some relief.

Off in the distance, a dim point of light around a massive star slowly grew into a sphere. Two moons orbited the multicolored planet of pastels on a side axial tilt, rolling around its star like a ball in a channel. The two moons almost suggested the hands of a clock. One side of the planet was forever baking in the sun, the other side freezing in the night. In between these two diametrically opposed environments, a swath of habitable land encircled the planet along with its two moons which were used to keep time by the inhabitants as the motion of the sun would have no meaning in the perpetual twilight of Dusk in its liable regions. Solstice 42 swept past the two moons making smaller and smaller elliptical orbits around the planet.

Inside the cockpit everyone crowded in to see the softly beautiful planet in the distance, its flowing pastel colors belying its environmental extremes. Nyroy and Padme sat in the cockpit seats seemingly pleased with the ship's graceful arcs around the rolling celestial body.

Nyroy jumped up when he was able to make contact with an actual voice. "This is Solstice 42 representing the New Alliance. We have Princess Merine Enclyda on board. Is your planet safe from the outbreak?" Nyroy asked. Only Nyroy could hear the voice coming back. He jumped up and hit the ceiling when he heard what he wanted to hear. "They're clean!" he enthused. Happy sighs abounded. "Sorry, sorry, ah, no, we can't do that," Nyroy said into his headset, "we're going to need a really, really long landing strip, if you have one of those. This is a really old ship. I mean, really old." Nyroy listened intently for moment as everyone watched him expectantly. "No, older than that," Nyroy answered the unheard voice. "…Yeah, that old," he continued.

Padme became impatient and adjusted her headset to be in on the conversation. "This is Colonel Padme Solo…." Padme was cut off by the person Nyroy was speaking to. "No, unfortunately I don't think this thing can dock in the outer atmosphere with another ship…Well, that one, it got vaporized…Yeah, tell me about it, it was beautiful…" Padme said taking a deep breath. Padme looked at each of them individually. "Strap yourselves in, folks. This may be a rough landing," she said.

"Any landing is a good landing," Merine said flatly.

Luke tapped Nyroy on the shoulder. Nyroy got up and gave Luke the co-pilot's chair. The rest of the team went into the cabin and did their best to secure themselves. Luke put on the headset and he smiled at Padme who responded with a nod.

The ship moved into the upper stratosphere of the dark side of the planet and despite the freezing temperatures the outside of the ship superheated and nothing could be seen out of the cockpit window but intense, pulsating plasma heat as the atmosphere swept by. The enclosure of heat around the ship dissipated as its speed slowed and they could view a horizon with a dim strip of light peaking over in the distance like the corona of an eclipse. Jagged land formations created artful indentations for flairs of magnificent twilight coming up before them.

The small ship swept into the pinkish light at the edge of the habitable region. Rocky, snowy mountains and crevices defined the area. There was no sign of any long stretch of land on which to land a superheated spacecraft. The ship raced through the rugged mountain range, the ice and snow glistening in the constant soft rose and coral sunlight. Reverse thrusters were employed as a patch of high ground came up quickly over the ever-lightening the soft hued horizon with a starscape in back of them perfectly clear and sparkling in the pristine, cold winter air.

The difference in temperatures finally breached the molecular structure of the front window of the ship and a spider web crack snapped and extended across the glass. "Everyone brace, everyone brace, this is gonna be a hard one," Padme shouted turning her head and shielding her eyes with her arm. Luke did the same as the windshield blew out and gale force winds wiped into the ship carrying cutting debris inside the ship.

The ship skidded with its front slightly titled up through miles of snow leaving an ice sheet in its heated wake. Finally, hitting slightly uneven ground, it shifted to the port side and enough snow accumulated to finally halt its movement. Some steam rose around the now grounded vessel then quickly froze in peculiar ice patterns on the haul. Ice cracked as the hatch opened. L3L5 flew out with vigor; while Nyroy, Ursula, and Merine tripped out behind happy to be on solid ground. L3L5 started spraying their minor cuts and bruises with antiseptic not well aimed which further irritated their wind stung eyes. The aerosol also tended to freeze on them. Luke stepped out and looked around as Padme bounded out in back of him literally jumping for joy. "Was that great or what!" she said swirling the snow on the ground like a child who has just seen it for the very first time. "Yeah, that was awesome!" she answered herself and danced around the slightly nauseous passengers from the cabin. L3L5 doused Luke in aerosol antiseptic much to his dismay, but the droid only tried vainly to keep up with Padme to tend to her minor cuts. Nyroy bent over trying to catch his breath, which he could now see. Padme punched Nyroy in the arm playfully although it did somewhat hurt the bruise that was already forming on his arm from the impact. "That's what we trained for! Finally, something that matters!" she enthused. Padme skipped forward through the beautiful snow field like a spirit set free from a bottle.

Merine wiped frozen antiseptic from her eyes and looked at Padme with genuine maternal concern. "I'm not saying that I would state myself as the sanest person in the galaxy, but I don't think she's completely right in the head," Merine said looking at Luke then Nyroy and instantly regretting her words. "Not that I'm not grateful to be alive and all that," she added.

Nyroy smiled and looked at Merine and Luke. "Don't worry about it. I spend almost every single day with her and if I didn't think she would take on a hungry Bantha with her hands tied with just her teeth as weapons for me; well, I would have had her committed years ago," Nyroy said as Padme threw a snowball at them and hit Ursula in the face. Ursula went running after Padme, they rolled down a hill together, and then started throwing snow at each other and laughing.

"I mean it's sweet, in a weird kind of way," Merine mused just as a snowball hit her shoulder. Merine didn't flinch and decided it might be the better part of valor to join the snowball fight whiffing a couple sad little snowballs then running around the ship for cover. C3P0 and R2D2 just looked out from the hatch.

"I take it everyone is all right," C3P0 asked. Bemused, Nyroy looked up at Luke and asked if they were going to go insane shortly as well.

Luke shrugged his shoulders. "What's the hurry?" Luke said as he was hit with snow from two sides by Padme and then Merine.

"I'm going inside," Nyroy said and stepped into the hatch with the droids.

"I hate snow," Luke said to no one in particular.

 **Winter's Eve**

Later, the light had not changed, as was the nature of Dusk, but fierce winds had churned up and blew past Padme, Luke, Nyroy, Ursula, Merine, and the droids as they marched through a deep, mossy valley. A remote blinking light in the distance implied some sort of settlement through a white curtain of drift. "You'd think they might be able to come and pick us up a little faster," Nyroy complained. They all were adequately bundled from provisions in Solstice 42 which did finally fulfill its function as an escape vessel with provisions for various circumstances. If the cold was difficult for everyone, Luke seemed to linger behind most bothered by the environment.

"My joints are frozen solid," C3P0 complained gaining no reaction let alone sympathy except R2D2 who only beeped a sound akin to agitated agreement.

Merine fell back from the single file march to walk with Luke whose hands were noticeably shaking. "How are you doing?" she asked him.

"I'm fine," he responded with teeth chattering. "I just don't like snow," he added.

"Well, growing up on a desert world and living in a tropical ecosystem for many years you're probably not well acclimated to these conditions," she said dusting snowflakes off her eyelashes.

"You're fine, so I should be fine," Luke said looking forward wondering if they could freeze solid in midstride.

Merine walked along without saying anything for a moment then stopped and turned to face Luke. "Actually, I think I'm freezing to death. Maybe you can help me out here?" she said without any actual outward displays of shivering or chattering teeth. She took her long cloak and swung it around Luke forcing them close together. "Conservation of energy," she said wrapping her arms around his waist in effort to keep him warm.

"Well, if you're cold…" Luke said trying not to shake.

A beautiful shuttle was almost directly overhead of them before they could see it in the blowing snow. Landing lights cut lines in the swirling squall as it landed gently in front of them. They all stopped and watched as the hatch opened and ornately uniformed soldiers exited followed by their commander who was hooded and goggled for the environment. The commander shouted out, "Colonel Solo, I assume?"

Padme walked up to the ship and shook the mitted hand of the commander with her mitted hand. "What took you so long?" she said seriously.

"Sorry, we found the ship first and expected you to shelter in place," the commander answered. Realizing the logic of this, Padme huffed and got into the shuttle. The soldiers helped the rest of the group in. The commander noticed Merine arm wrapped around Luke for warmth and seemed a little perplexed by who was helping who. "Princess Merine Enclyda of Olim?" the commander asked Merine. She just smiled and nodded as she pushed Luke up in front of her. The Commander took Merine's hand and helped her into the ship.

When all were inside the shuttle, the craft took off with comfortable ease, a luxury vessel after a junkyard heap. It had a very well-appointed interior. "Nice weather you have here," Nyroy said.

"Just over the next valley it is very nice," the commander said as he took his helmet and goggles off revealing himself to be the very, very handsome Prince Geren seen in the holograph. Merine realized who he was and quickly tried to fulfill her formal obligations. She curtsied a bit awkwardly and held out her hand to him. He took it in a gentlemanly fashion and kissed if with not quite the slight edge Luke might have had when he did the same with her.

"It's an honor to meet you, sir. I'm sorry I didn't recognize you right away in your gear," Padme said, voice rising in pitch, mildly startling Luke, Nyroy, and Ursula by her sudden nervousness.

"I wouldn't have expected you to," he said smiling. "You're lovelier than the images I have seen; it's nice to meet you as well." He looked passed Merine at Padme.

"And you're escorts?" Geren asked Merine wanting an introduction to the rest of the group.

"Perhaps Colonel Solo should do the honors. It's her team, she got us here," Merine said. Padme was slightly at a loss for words at the moment.

Padme looked at Geren and did something that stunned her team into a kind of silence no barked order could have. Padme giggled nervously. She took Geren's hand and shook one too many times. Geren realized she would continue until he pulled his hand back. Perhaps Nyroy's eyes grew the widest in complete shock and awe. This was Colonel Padme Solo of the New Alliance. Daughter of renowned smuggler turned Rebel Leader and hero, Han Solo, daughter of President Leia Organa, Rebel Leader and hero and forger of a new government that promised hope across the galaxy, niece of the last Jedi, Luke Skywalker, the quickest rising commando and officer in the President's elite forces without preference but greater need to prove her worthiness in the new order; suddenly and inexplicably being turned into jelly by of all things: a handsome man. It was both amusing and appalling to him. Padme had faced unyielding Imperial Stormtroopers, traveled through distant and dangerous outreaches of the galaxy in hopes of finding some evidence of her long-lost father or at least his ship, and fought disease ridden monsters attacking her team; to only giggle like a school girl for not a soldier or warrior or military guru even - but a prince? An entitled elite? It was almost too much for Nyroy to take in as his whole perception of the universe altered and he sat down while taking a deep breath.

"Who are you?" he mouthed to Padme who ignored him.

If Luke, Merine, and Ursula were not in quite in the same state as Nyroy having the foundations of their lives torn asunder, their collective wide eyes still suggested a level of surprise that provoked L3L5 to examine each one's pupils individually. Geren was unclear as to what was occurring around him with the sudden silence his guests had plunged into. He floundered for any conversational mechanism to awaken the ship of mannequins he found himself with. "That's a very good droid you have there," he said pointing to L3L5. None of them were shaken from their state of frozen statues, only L3L5 managed to say, "Thank you."

 **Decontamination**

Padme, Luke, Nyroy, Ursula, Merine, Geren with his guards, and the droids sat in a sterile, windowless room on completely utilitarian benches in billowy, shiny garments akin to scrubs. Steam radiated out of the floor and lasers scanned them from the ceiling. It might have been a spa, or more accurately, a sweat lodge for the lack of any ambiance. C3P0 continued to insist that droids are not susceptible to biological contaminants and all the moisture was bad for his circuitry. As if to emphasize the point, R2D2 blew a circuit and electric charges surged about the droid and caused noisy feedback. Ursula waved at the smoke R2D2 produced and decided the droid was fine.

Geren and Padme enjoyed the heat after being out in the bitter cold, but Nyroy looked around mildly disappointed. He leaned over to Merine to whisper, "I can't believe they use moist heat as a disinfectant. Your planet was only a backwater by virtue of all the water. What's next, they treat swelling with hot and cold?" Merine didn't directly react to Nyroy but glanced over at him in some agreement.

Geren overheard Nyroy quite clearly and in a very relaxed manner explained the heat was just to help bring up core temperatures, they were being mildly irradiated as well to kill any microorganisms. Merine leaned over to Nyroy to whisper, knowing she would be heard, "We're being microwaved," she said. Nyroy nodded his head. This didn't bother Geren who brought himself to a meditative place and just let the complaining happen around him as all good.

Conversely, Ursula began to howl uncontrollably and stood up and banged on the door. "Your head is not going to explode, I think anyway," Nyroy said. Ursula sat down becoming somewhat indifferent to the prospect of her head exploding. It was too hot in the room, and skull explosion was one way to get out. Ursula sighed loudly.

Luke just sat breathing heavily and sweating profusely. "Is it really healthy to go from extreme cold to extreme heat?" he said generally to room, "Shouldn't there be some transition in between?" L3L5 flew over to him with an extra set of scans and he was blasted with yet more antiseptic that probably made no difference under the circumstances. "Thank you L3L5," he said in spite of being made even more uncomfortable and coughing from breathing in L3L5's chemical cocktail. Merine reached over to Luke to feel his pulse rate on his wrist. She looked at him concerned for a moment. Luke pulled his right hand away. Merine blushed red with embarrassment as she remembered his right hand was prosthetic. She quietly apologized and reached for Luke's left hand. Luke's face was flushed as well and he appeared slightly nauseous. Merine looked over at Geren and asked if it might be okay to do the decontamination incrementally, they had already passed through holding area. Geren said that was no problem.

Luke became slightly indignant at the implication he needed special care. "I'm fine," he insisted. "I've had to deal with more arduous physical situations than this," he said.

Emulating Geren's meditative stance, Padme sat comfortably seeking her own calm center and said, "Yes, Jedi training, that would be useful here…" Luke ignored her.

"Well, I really don't feel very good really," Merine said in spite of seeming completely well but for her now diminishing black eye. "I'm going to step out for a moment?" she said. Geren nodded. Merine took Luke's left hand, "Keep me company," she said.

"I'm fine, thank you," he answered mildly annoyed. "What if I pass out or trip and no one's there, I'm supposed to be important or something like that," she said.

"Yes, what if _she_ passes out?" Padme said with a mild smirk. Luke decided he would be abused less going with Merine than staying and actually passing out, which he feared was a real possibility without great effort.

The door to the decontamination room slid open to reveal the airlock chamber beyond. Steam billowed into the room as cooler air met the moist, hot air. Merine walked down into the next room first and looked back at Luke to see if he was following. He was relieved to be in the less extreme temperature. There was a single stone step into the adjacent chamber and condensation on it he couldn't se. He slipped and went careening to the stone floor. The impact hurt, along with the twisting and turning of joints in directions they weren't intended to go, but not as much as when Padme ran over to see what had happened with real fear and concern.

Geren and Nyroy came up in back of Padme just standing there. Geren leaned over to Nyroy to whisper. "She's very sweet really," Geren said.

"Oh yes, Merine is well, odd, but kind of sweet. I would say that," Nyroy said assuredly.

"No, I meant the Colonel actually," Geren said.

"Oh yeah, she's a well, I wouldn't call it sweet, but you get used to it. You can even grow to like it in a weird way…" Nyroy drifted off thinking about the fact he did somewhat enjoy Padme's abuse and would miss it if she suddenly became all warm and kind with him.

"How do you mean, odd?" Geren asked Nyroy concerned.

"Odd, but in a good way. She's a lot of fun," Nyroy said realizing he had created an anxious situation he could have avoided with some very basic thought.

"Fun?..." Geren said mostly to himself, wondering what that actually meant.

Merine tried to help Luke up. He slipped again on the wet floor and managed to take Merine down with him. L3L5 flew out of the decontamination room and then suddenly stopped short, as if the droid didn't have a program to deal with the particular situation. Merine managed to stand, but Luke didn't bother trying to get up again trying to breathe through the pain in his knee.

"I'm getting too old for this," he said to the floor. Padme used her considerable strength to hold his arm and help him up.

"Don't say that…" she said with some near pleading in her voice.

 **The Eldest's Burden**

Luke woke up in a contained medical suite with what appeared to be enough medical apparatus and monitors to serve a small, if primitive planet. It seemed excessive when he assessed he may have had a sprained knee and a bruised wrist. Merine sat next to him with her hands folded, just looking at him a bit more concerned that he was comfortable with.

L3L5 whirled in back of Merine from monitor to monitor to work with the other medical equipment. The room was hermetically closed-off with only machinery besides Luke and Merine. L3L5 seemed to be in its glory interfacing with its medical equipment staff.

"Isn't this a bit excessive?" Luke asked Merine. She nodded her agreement. "They became afraid you might be infected," she said. This hadn't occurred to Luke and he looked up at her with the notion sinking in. "Am I?" he asked with concern that he hadn't been aware of. Merine shook her head with assuredness. "I've seen it several times now," she said seriously, "You wouldn't be asking me if you had it if you did." Luke asked why they let her into the room. She had told them she was immune, but they weren't going to let her out either until all the tests came back clear.

Geren knocked on the observation window of the room to get Merine's attention. Geren saw Luke awake and all seemed fine to him. Merine waved to Geren to indicate everything was good. Geren smiled at her and made a small square with his fingers which seemed peculiar to Luke, but Merine appeared to understand. She pointed to small bag tied around her wrist and Geren seemed pleased by her gesture and walked away. Merine smiled at Geren and waved as he left, the fact she was forcing cheerfulness was already wearing on her face.

Then Padme knocked at the window and waved to Luke with a smile he wasn't sure was genuine and or meant to mock him. He turned on his side and pulled the sheet over his head. Padme walked away still smiling broadly.

Luke looked up at Merine and asked if they could get released. He did feel like he was in a zoo. She shrugged her shoulders and told him she was in no hurry and asked if he was. Luke realized in medical confinement his niece would have a more difficult task in aggravating him. "No, not really," he said. "Can I ask you something?" he looked at Merine almost gravely.

"I guess so," she responded.

"Why did you agree to all this?" he said plainly. She didn't respond and just shrugged her shoulders. "I understand your compassion for your sister," he said earnestly, "But was this really your obligation to take on? Didn't you feel what you were doing, your work, already had meaning?"

Merine became genuinely uncomfortable with the question. She looked at him and breathed out heavily. "I thought _you_ would understand," she said.

"Why?" he asked, "One thing I have never been faced was an arranged marriage. That would truly scare me."

She smiled at him. "Two minutes or twenty years difference, the oldest always takes on the first burden," she said almost nihilistically. Luke mulled what she was saying for a moment. She bent over and kissed him on the forehead. They're eyes met. He pulled the sheet up to cloak anything's or anyone's sight line and pulled her head down to kiss him on the lips. She was too startled to reject or respond quite properly. He pulled the sheet down and let her go as she sat back befuddled.

"Sorry, it's was all these chemicals in my system, it's not like me at all," she said referencing her uninhibited behavior before. She turned scarlet red. "I think you're recovered, and now we're even," she said aggravated, not all with him. "I don't know what got Ilya and me. They were smarter than the infected…" she drifted off into reflection.

Luke was surprised at himself. If he was well aware of whom he had been and had to be, who he was _thought_ to be, the admission that he wasn't free of all worldly desire and fear, pain and ego, relieved something within him. It was not that he had never been in love, never had desires, was so completely opposed to a woman hanging on him albeit it in an intoxicated stupor; but that had all been set aside because there were larger issues than himself that required something of him. If he had been painted as all things good later in life, something to aspire to, not someone; the meaning of it all became lost in all the edification. It wasn't a case of being so different than anyone else, but merely acting on the right choices that are obvious without explanation, only difficult to do. Luke's father had resented all the losses to something larger before he could freely choose his own destiny. Luke had perhaps even fewer choices in his own life. It was at the core of why he saw no need for the Jedi to continue. The galaxy seemed a far better place with the Force as a distant notion.

"Sorry," he said somewhat insincerely.

"It's all right," she responded perfunctorily. He suspected she understood what he was thinking and not for any particular trick of the Force, but simple understanding. She had seen part of herself in him before he ever met her. He didn't know if compassion was to love her or leave her alone. He was always leaving other people alone, not be the problem. But he had become a visitor in his own life.

 **The Perihelion Palace**

The Palace sat in the center of a thriving metropolis set in the center of a pastoral valley with a constant temperate climate and thriving vegetation. Pollen and petals floated on a light breeze as a shuttle descended into the Perihelion Palace's landing facilities. The roofs, like most around the city, were of a kind of glass suitable for weather protection but that would allow the constant glow of twilight to permeate the interiors with pinkish hues producing no shadows. It was the definition of seeing the world through rose colored glass.

Within the grand interior court, highly polished marble designed to reflect the diffuse light in the most efficient manner possible was crossed by guards, citizens, and politicians in a bit of a hurry to arrange themselves for a formal ceremony. Translucent abstract art was intermittently placed along the great space and plants softened the elegant lines hanging from the sky lit ceiling. It was a stunningly beautiful place, if in part to counter the effects on the psychology to the inhabitants of never being in full sunlight.

Guards and courtiers formed receiving lines and chatted amongst themselves. An elderly man entered the hall to stand at the front of the parallel lines of the finely attired citizens. He had a kind and gentle quality about him. A white beard indicated his years but the sparkle in his eyes suggested someone who still found much to be joyful about in life. Geren walked up to his father, King Gregor, and they greeted each other warmly.

Meanwhile, Nyroy sat in a small, windowless room with some technicians gossiping with each other about how the Prime Minister and King really don't get along and Geren would eventually be a much better King being more like his mother who they really did like but was never given the credit she was due all the same. A third technician came in and disagreed with the whole thesis the other technicians were pursuing and they argued the relative virtues of intellect versus charismatic leadership skills in public life. They also talked about how one of them was passed over for a promotion for someone less qualified because he had ingratiated himself to the Prime Minister's assistant and it really wasn't fair. Despite their disagreements, they did manage to bond in their disgruntlements with the Prime Minister's secretary whose mother had helped her get the position in the first place.

Nyroy shook his head thinking that he could be overhearing exactly the same conversation at the Capitol, or anywhere, and he cared just about the same. He just sat in a little cubicle with the holographic image of his wife and children flickering in and out, relieved at finally being able to make contact. "We're fine, we're fine," his wife, Elise, said to him repeatedly as a baby wiggled in her arms and a toddler climbed on her back.

"So, you have arrangements in the Capitol," he said.

"I already told you," Elise replied in the holographic halo. "Just come back, make sure you come back," she said.

"I will," he said and they smiled as the children waved and threw kisses. The transmission abruptly ended.

One of the technicians insisted they should start getting dressed right away or they all would be late. Nyroy was dragged along in their eagerness to get ready and look just right because the Prime Minister would be there and they didn't want to be talked about. Since they had taken the time to help Nyroy out, he decided it was only right that he placate their social concerns. Nyroy asked gossipy questions about the Prince that they were delighted to answer with the cursory statement, it was just between them. Nyroy got an earful he really didn't care about but acted interested in how they thought the Prince would never get married, being too much of an intellectual with his mind always elsewhere, so the arrangement probably was a good thing. It would make Palace life more interesting. Nyroy actually hoped that these people could remain as oblivious to what was going on in the rest of the galaxy as they seemed.

In an anterior chamber Merine sat with young women fussing about with the flowing lavender dress Merine was wearing and to put flowers in her reddish-blonde locks, all neatly spun into seemingly disarrayed spirals of precise design. Obviously, the people of Dusk cared very much about creating beauty.

If Merine did not have the blush of youth, she was still quite lovely and the sweetness that might have made a young girl seem almost mythically unattainable, only made Merine that much more accessible, with far more knowing eyes. Merine smiled in appreciation at the attendants trying to hide her discomfort that only grew in spite of the relaxed and happy environment. She got up to walk towards a large hallway thanking them, telling them what a good job they did, but thought she should walk out by herself. She pointed out she was a grown woman: then tripped on her dress but recovered before needing help. The women scattered to go fix themselves up with happy anticipation.

Alone in the dimly lit hallway, Merine sensed someone watching her from behind. She turned to see Luke and they just stood for a moment looking at each other sadly. Just the trace of a tear formed in her fully healed, make-up laden translucent green eyes. He smiled at her and said; "You look beautiful…be happy…" he turned to walk away. She looked down and her voice cracked a little as she called after him.

"Would you go with me…please," he looked back and wondered what the right thing to do was. He realized, he didn't really care at the moment, it was difficult enough. Luke walked up to Merine and she took hold of his arm as they passed through ornate double doors into the great hall washed in rosy light.

Within the gathering in the great hall, Padme stood with Nyroy, Ursula, and the droids. The droids where all polished to a bright, shiny luster. Padme's true beauty was enhanced by elegant robes and prismatic stones braided into her hair by an insistent old woman who was absolutely right about how they would bring out the sparkling gleam in her youthful eyes.

As Luke and Merine walked in, Luke looked over at Padme and had to smile for how much she looked like Leia at her most regal. Merine looked up at Luke, wondering if it might be the last time, and hesitated in letting go of his arm. Of course, there could be no kiss, no gesture, no words of a longing unfulfilled in the great hall of elite citizens, and would-be husbands for the greater good of all. Luke put his hand over Merine's as she walked away into the center of the room. Luke looked again over at Padme again and smiled. She smiled back and did make him feel better in that moment. She was beautiful like her mother whom he loved very much.

Merine was shaken when rumbling music bellowed through the gigantic hall. The deep, guttural sound seemed quite normal and obvious to the citizens of Dusk, but was exceedingly formal for those who came there on Solstice 42 rolling through the snow with misaligned gravity plates. King Gregor patted his son's back and introduced Princess Merine to the gathering. Polite applause answered. Geren approached Merine; she was standing alone surrounded by people in an empty circle, not unlike the contest Pythie had faced in a dark death match on Olim. Geren bowed and smiled kindly. Merine curtsied and took his hand gingerly. The room applauded at the seemingly sweet scene. Padme looked away a moment as she clapped. She liked Merine, this was a good thing she told herself, the fulfillment of their mission, and she repeated this as a mantra so it might feel true.

Luke noticed as Merine and Geren took each other's hand the slight fear in each of their expressions, looking at each other not as future spouses but with apprehension. Merine clasped a small square, much like any holographic recording, but the hint of some sort of government seal on it seemed to gleam brightly to Luke where no one else even noticed it, a slight glistening that was gone in an instant. Geren nodded almost as a micro-movement and helped Merine up from her deep and formal courtesy palming the little square from her like a thief. Luke wondered to himself what he minded worse: that he might not know the true nature of the mission, or it was some peculiar love token. Either way, Merine and Geren had some secret between them that went beyond the formalities and protocols of arcane political arrangements.

For all the genteel elegance and happiness surrounding Merine and Geren in the amber hued light a slight tension was acknowledged between them and the king, as if they were measuring themselves as actors in a play within a play. Geren passed the small rectangle to his father who in turn shook the hand of an officer. The officer left without the ease displayed in the rest of the gathering, trying to force a comfortable affect. The Prime Minister nodded affirmation to the King. Padme felt little need to explore the conventions of etiquette in general and went up to Merine and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Merine was genuinely moved by this and hugged her. Padme offered her hand to Geren to congratulate him. He took her hand obligingly if with a touch of oddly placed guilt. Padme was well aware she was attracted to him, but that meant nothing, she told herself. It would pass quickly and she would wonder afterwards what had overtaken her upper reasoning skills.

All the calculated smiles and repressed passions in the throw and sway of the social gathering gave way when an intense crashing sound echoed through the great hall. One of the abstract glass statues smashed and shattered into glittering shards much smaller and sharper than mere falling would have caused. Citizens and officials looked around bewildered, then to each other for some indication as how to react, neither finding any answer. Small groups murmured if as if this was a threat, or just some very unfortunate accident that someone was going to be in trouble for, or some dimwitted desire to gain attention.

Then the diseased beasts came en masse. From corners and rafter, strange hiding places of stone and glass, disfigured and tortured bundles of flesh leaped and with razor sharp claws and slid over obsidian surfaces with a high-pitched screeching that tingled up the most disciplined of military spines.

They weren't quite the tortured monsters of Olim, once with hopes and thoughts nor beset with pain, people preordained with the knowledge of their own existence and mortality, but actual animals inflicted with the dreaded, awful condition that held living things captive. Primal to begin with, the giant wolf-like creatures extended fangs with blood dripping from their mouths if not from a kill, from the overgrowth of teeth too large for their own large mouths causing agony to the animals themselves and the anger that followed. The deformed and tortured primordial canines circled as a pack for a moment stalking their prey, ensuring the chaos they had become themselves.

Padme had managed to conceal a blaster in her elegant attire; she had no intention to respect protocol to the point of foolishness, the weapons ban was for others. She pulled the blaster out and said the obvious for those who might not perceive, "they're infected." The animals attacked in a circle easily killing those too close by happenstance and fate. Padme started firing methodically with acute precision, picking off the beasts with a single shot to the head and moving on to the next. If there was blood splatter, she saw little option as the panicked gathering dispersed in terror. Nyroy had managed to keep a blaster with him as well and took Padme's back. Ursula howled with furious frustration at not having any weaponry. The guards did their best against the onslaught but their formal, ancient, formal metal weapons with blunt edges made their attempts almost sad displays of suicidal gallantry. Merine and Geren were surrounded by the formal guard, but they ultimately acted as an impediment to any escape for them as the animals lunged forward dismembering all living beings in their path and creating a barrier of the deceased. Luke leapt into the fray with light saber activated and dispatched enough of the creatures to cut a path to the door. Citizens pressed for egress out of the building, if in one last act of empathy trying not to trample anyone else as they fled, still driven furiously by fear.

An officer pressed the king and prime minister towards a remote exit. The king tried to wipe the blood off his face that had sprayed there - getting into the soft tissue around his eyes. Geren tried to protect Merine though weaponless, just closing in over her on the floor, but called out when he realized he was being separated from his family. Luke pulled Merine harshly by the upper arm to come with him and had Geren follow towards the door as one of the wolf-creatures pounced towards Luke. The creature was cut in two by the light saber as Luke swung Merine around to avoid any collision with the dismembered wild thing or its drizzle of blood and mucus not cauterized by the blow. "Remember, I'm immune she shouted," but he ignored her, his rough hold on her arm puzzling her as much as the deadly chaos surrounding them. Geren stayed with them having little other option. Ceiling glass shattered from above leaving the floor a glistening mass of shards that could impale as creatures descended to the floor.

Luke called over to Padme and Nyroy. Ursula picked off creatures between them finding some semblance of a ceremonial cross bow that worked. The wolves learned quickly it was best to stay clear of the heavier arms. Luke waved to Padme to come with him. They ran towards the doors. The droids followed out of an alcove they had been hiding, trying to move as quickly as they could over the broken shards of glass.

People pressed by Padme and Luke and their entourage, but the sound of distant screams made it clear there was no safety beyond the palace. Leaving was no recluse. Explosions tore through the elegant buildings of the city and the sound of shattering glass became ubiquitous seemingly cutting the air. The small group stopped for a moment, wondering if anyone of them might know which way to go. They all looked to Geren first, but he seemed devastated by the loss of life around him. Luke still held tightly to Merine's arm and without his own awareness shook her and asked what was really going on.

She looked up at him as if he had become different person and her entire reality was out of order. When Padme looked at Luke with a kind of disturbance on her face he had never seen before, he became shaken by his own lack of discipline over his own feelings. He had not had to control any large emotions for so long, he was forgetting to be wary where they led. Padme had fought with him since she was old enough to talk, but never had she known him to be out of true control and knew in her heart everything he did centered on principle, on others, a part of him was real altruism. But he just seemed human in that moment, and it was frightening. In stories of long ago, she had always known the endings.

R2D2 whistled for attention as he tried to get the group to follow down a dark, exterior path from the palace in the light of an impressionistic painting. L3L5 flew out in front. "We're going to have to leave the city," Geren said as he looked around, maddened by his helplessness to do anything useful. "The droid's right, it's the best way out of the valley," he said as he waved for them to follow. The rest followed quickly and silently in the blood-soaked chaos.

 **Transmission**

Leia hung over a lab technician, Rell, was supposed to concentrate on a holographic image of a primitive virus with dangling DNA mutating. Finally, Rell sat up and faced Leia with exasperation he tried to temper with both respect and some compassion. "Ma'am, I can't work like this," he said shaking his head. The lab in back of them had multiple teams of technicians and droids working on similar experiments. Most of the droids were the same class as L3L5.

"Dr. Rell, why is it taking so long to even get a theoretical answer?" Leia asked impatiently, her tone cutting, but the scientist was able to put aside any sense of the work being personal.

"Because we're working with a theoretical virus, Madam President," Rell said before thinking. "I'm sorry, but without an actual sample we can't simulate an actual antidote or vaccine. We barely know the structure of the threat or the nature of the transmission," he said with frustration of his own.

"The threat has a mortality rate of one hundred percent of every living thing it comes into contact with. That's why we can't risk a sample transfer to the Capitol, we've had this discussion," Leia said with agitation.

Rell looked down and paused before he spoke again. "Ma'am, with that particular set of circumstances, we know all we can really do is quarantine," he said plaintively. It hung in the air a moment, an odious and offensive thing.

Leia calmed herself and spoke softly as if Rell had been her friend for a long time, though they had never met before that day. "What's the point of quarantine with one hundred percent mortality?" she asked rhetorically. She knew he knew the answer to the previously unstated question.

"Sterilization then…" he said understanding the importance of what he was saying, sitting back helpless and aggravated in his chair. "I don't know what else to say," he said looking at Leia not as an authority figure but another human being confronted with something they prefer not have to examine or even think about.

One of Leia's special agents entered the lab and asked to speak with her privately. She walked over to the agent to talk in hushed tones near a vast plasma shield with a cavalcade of stars in back of it. The agent remained as emotionless as he could. "We've gotten transmission that Colonel Solo and her team, less one casualty, Lt. Pythie, have succeeded in getting Princess Merine to Dusk," he said plainly. Leia didn't want to appear happy knowing that one in the team had been lost; still, she was glad to get the message.

"Okay, that's progress," she said looking up at the tall, slim agent.

"There's something else, ma'am," he paused and drew in a long breath.

Unable to be patient with his hesitation in the current circumstances, Leia finally burst out, "What?!"

The agent answered abruptly. "Dusk has reported the infection."

Leia closed her eyes and walked out the door without saying a word. The agent didn't follow. "Any orders, ma'am?" he asked perfunctorily. She didn't answer and he didn't ask again.

There was a pause for a moment amongst the clinical activity, and then they all got back to work with great diligence doubting its efficacy but feeling a need to do it all the same with as much fervor they could muster if only not to feel.

 **The Filigree Forest**

With the light in the sky never changing, it was difficult to gage the passage of time on Dusk, but Geren was able to look up at the twin moons in the distance to assess how long the group had been walking. The city receded into the distance with smoke rising high into the upper atmosphere behind them, further diffusing the reddish light and creating an illusion of the sky being on fire.

They all walked one by one into thick, dense brush, and then into an ancient forest of trees native to only Dusk. The trees could be described as similar to willows with the delicate leaves of a birch with the same white and brown bark. But what gave them their name and a particular grace was how the branches swirled at the end into varying spirals with the fractal geometric beauty of a fern. As the wind moved through the thin, long branches, the sound was similar to soft, rolling surf on a calm day. The forest was an easy place to hide in and there seemed little movement beyond a light breeze in the ancient woods.

Geren turned tiredly to the silent group making its way through the underbrush and said it was time for them to camp for a while. "How can you tell," Nyroy asked without getting an answer. "It's pretty, but I don't know if I could live in this kind of light all the time," he said if only to make some sound.

The group came to a clearing and with no provisions with them and hindered by formal clothes in the wilderness. Ursula set about to build a camp fire. It took her about two seconds to gather enough wood and kindling, knocking over whatever got in her way. Then Padme used her blaster to ignite the pile with efficiency and it crackled quite nicely, popping in the everlasting evening light.

"Do you think we might attract unwanted attention with that, Padme?" Nyroy asked pointing the fire as sparks erupting from a moist branch transcended into the sky. Ursula just growled loudly with everyone simply understanding she was cold and wanted to keep the fire, specific words were not necessary. They were all cold and tired.

"I think the brush is dense enough to mask the glow. I don't think we're dealing with heat detecting sensors," Geren said sitting on the ground exhausted. The rest of the group sat down, laid down, or landed depending on their individual disposition and relative inclination to the ground.

Nyroy looked over at Geren with a slight hostility that was nearly antithetical to his usual rather thought out, oh-so-cool, casual nature. "Why did you say the planet was clean?" Nyroy asked pointedly. Geren shot a look at Nyroy that could have killed.

"It was clean until _you_ got here," Geren said bitterly. Padme suggested they bring it down a notch, fighting amongst themselves wasn't going to help anything.

"It might make me feel better though," Nyroy said with mirth.

"Enough. That's an order," Padme said trying to create a pile of leaves and grass for bedding.

"I'm sorry, Colonel, but if you had any thought that you were carrying the disease with your ship we were due some warning," Geren said, "that's not just a legal issue for the New Alliance, it might have been the right thing to do."

Padme gave Geren the evil look Geren had just given Nyroy. "I had no reason to believe the still undefined pathogen, as far as I know, survived on the exterior of a ship moving through deep space," she said.

"Not the exterior of the ship, is it possible any of you are carriers?" Geren said plainly.

"You get it, you get it," Padme said. Nyroy looked over at Merine in a way that made her squirm. "Not on Olim," Nyroy said as everyone turned and looked at Merine. She became horrified for a moment as she thought about what he had just said, suggesting she carried a disease that did not affect her.

"It seemed most of the population on Olim had immunity, perhaps not the wildlife, but there were plenty of perfectly healthy citizens when we were just there," Nyroy said coldly. Merine breathed in and then looked at all the accusatory eyes cast her way. Luke glanced about from person to person, trying to determine if the group were breaking down and starting to turn on itself from fatigue and fear.

Geren held in a kind of rage that one reserves for child murders as he leaned closer to Merine. Luke felt he should sit between Geren and Merine as a famous, legendary buffer. If Luke had been jealous in a way he didn't like or particularly know before in himself, the inspiration for that jealously seemed no longer present. Geren was as unwitting to brokered marriage as Merine. "I'm not trying to deflect any blame. If I did something to spread this disease, I truly do want to be held to account, whatever that might be," Merine said making sure she looked everyone in their eyes, even the droids. "But we did have some ability to study the deformation agent and it does not seem to transmit in the prototypical manner. It's almost like a connective energy, almost subspace," she said plainly to blank stares.

"The Force?" Padme said incredulously and sighed.

Merine shook her head. "No, not at all, truly quite opposite," Merine said, "there's something to the nature of living things, a spark, I've never encountered a good explanation, but this thing destroys that intangible thing. It's extremely difficult to explain. I don't know how to cure something like that. It's like before anyone knew there were viruses or bacteria. How do you deal with what you can't see? There's a drive towards life, what is that?" she said with genuine frustration.

"The Dark Side of the Force?" Nyroy asked. "I mean, there was a time…" he looked over at Luke, the firelight reflected in his eyes.

"I truly don't know," Merine said, "I'm not sure this definition is even the beginning of sufficient. But it does seem that transmission may be in subspace, the quantum level, the underlying fabric of matter and space and time. We were at a loss for any hypothesis to deal with outside of…" Merine cut herself off, feeling a need to confront the initial accusation against her. "As it is, it seems the animal population here has been affected and I can say I haven't had any contact with animals, so to speak, and if I were a carrier in the traditional sense," she looked at Luke, Padme, Nyroy, and Ursula, "you all would have had by now. I unfortunately did get to observe its progression on Olim. Perhaps there are no patterns at all, but then what? Then there really is nothing to be done," she said holding her hands out in unknowing.

The fire crackled as Padme wished the sun might set so she might forget this day and wondered how people lived without night, the demarcation of time into units in which to set bad days aside. There would be no darkness to make the rest of the universe come into view.

Luke looked Geren up and down as if trying to assess him. "Is this some ploy to blame her," Luke said indicating Merine, "But there is something else going on here?" Luke then starred at Merine waiting for an answer.

"What do you mean?" Geren asked. "That thing you passed in all the pomp and circumstance. What was it?" Luke asked plainly. Padme found her sleepiness subsiding as the suggestion came up that she was on a mission she didn't have all the information about.

"What thing?" Padme said insistently.

"Nothing," Geren said not having much talent for lying.

"It was plans for an alternate solution," Merine said feeling no real benefit to subterfuge.

"What alternate solution?" Nyroy asked wondering if he really wanted the answer.

"There are some possible subspace manipulations that can be made that…" Merine stopped speaking as she was cut off by Padme.

"Destroy everything?" Padme finished Merine's sentence with plain language.

After what seemed an interminable moment, "Yes," Geren answered. Indignant, Padme asked if the President, her mother, knew about this. Both Geren and Merine looked at her with some pained sympathy.

"She ordered it," Merine said quietly.

"Everything? That's insane! We may as well be the Empire with Death Stars again…" Padme said standing up and pacing, unable to comprehend her mother doing such a thing.

"Not everything," Merine said, "But enough to make the rest safe. It's different. It's not destruction for its own sake."

"So, we just all get to die, that's brilliant military strategy and awesome policy," Padme said disgusted. "The rest of the galaxy excepts it because we're here?" Padme looked at Luke appalled.

"It's a last alternative," Geren said.

Then Padme looked at Luke with a kind of heartbreak neither he nor Nyroy had ever seen before in her. "Okay, I get it. It's my and Nyroy and Ursula's job, this is what we do and I know perfectly well we're the best to get such and so somewhere and what needs to be done. We're excellent intergalactic couriers," Padme said tearing up while looking over at Luke who was completely surprised by Padme's out pouring of feeling. "I understand duty," Padme continued, "I even understand marrying someone you might not love because that's what you have to do. I don't know if anyone can avoid destiny, but to make a choice to…" A tear ran down Padme's face, "I don't know her, I don't know you, Luke Skywalker."

No one quite understood the real source of Padme's angst. "It's not a willful choice, Padme," Merine said trying to give her something to hang onto. "No one wants this…"

Padme looked squarely at Luke, "But then why send you? Why would she do that?" Padme wiped away her tears angrily.

Luke approached Padme to tried to hug her, if it was peculiar to their relationship after her childhood. Padme slapped his face with all her might. "Why did you come? Why did you listen to her?" she yelled turning away not wanting to look at him with the all rage she was experiencing.

Merine's eyes welled up and she ran over to Padme and held her face and tried stroking her hair as a mother might. Padme pushed back at Merine with a touch of revulsion, but Merine continued just the same and held Padme's face to meet her eyes. "You don't understand," Merine said to Padme.

"Oh, please, I'm not stupid," Padme said.

Merine smiled and shook her head. "No, you're not stupid… Just young," Merine paused for a moment. "President Organ wanted him to come so you might have a chance to survive," Merine said wiping tears from Padme's face.

"Is that a good enough reason?" Padme asked rhetorically.

"It's a reason," Merine answered. Padme pulled away from her. Ursula grumbled.

 **Decisions**

Leia sat in her private quarters alone. She brushed her hand through holographic images of her daughter, her brother when he was young and unknown to her, and Han Solo on a desk in front of her. They were just ephemeral images that her hand could not touch, no matter how delicately she tried to pierce the space between. A coded signal came through and she switched on a holographic transmission of Icara in place of the other images.

"Status?" Leia said plainly and succinctly.

"We have regained control of the city. Obviously with the situation on Dusk, we have a self-imposed quarantine," Icara responded with a certain detachment as well.

"Do you have any progress in identifying your particular antigens?" Leia asked without being able to disguise a real desire for some reason to hope. The holograph flickered in and out for a moment as Icara spoke. Leia had to ask Icara to repeat herself.

"Yes and no. It's not a specific immunity, it's something in the environment, maybe even in the region of space," Icara answered with the slightest glimmer of hope.

"Can you isolate it?" Leia asked Icara.

"Yes, we have a generalized theory serotype, but it has no application value yet, the necessary conditions aren't necessarily biological or have to do with long term exposure to a theoretical condition," Icara said without even a hint of enthusiasm.

"Well how long would that take to isolate?" Leia asked exasperated, wondering why she had to drag out the obvious.

"Too long," Icara answered. "We're dealing with a field of study at a nascent level. It's like trying to alter photosynthesis on a genetic level while still learning how to put a seed in the ground and water it," Icara said.

Finally, Leia had had enough. She slapped the desk and stood. "I don't care about the difficulties of study protocols et cetera! You want me to blow up about thirty systems, one with my own family on it, while you dither away with academic experiments. I'm not terribly concerned with process at the moment, just solutions," Leia snapped sharply.

Icara wasn't upset by what Leia was saying, it made perfect sense to her and wasn't out of Icara's own realm of feeling. "We would be in the region affected by the event," Icara said flatly.

"So, to destroy this thing, we would also be destroying the one place that holds any promise of a cure or even understanding?" Leia asked as if completely exasperated by the very nature of the universe itself.

"Yes," Icara answered flatly with no illustration.

Leia picked up a decorative glass object and threw it against a wall causing glass shards to spray about. Leia slapped the desk again, "Not acceptable!" Leia shouted away from the image of Icara. "I want another option. Consider that an order and a condition upon entrance into the New Alliance, Madam," Leia said. Icara just nodded. There's was nothing she wanted more than to comply. Leia cut off the transmission.

Leia sunk her face into her hands as the whole of the galaxy swirled in the window beside her. She looked at her reflection on a shiny wall and wished for everything she had had and would ever have; she was someone else without her responsibilities.

 **Water and Time, Wave and Particle**

With the group finally sleeping around the dwindling campfire, Luke stayed up to keep watch. He poked at the fire with a twig as Ursula batted at insects interested in her new and different scents in their entomological world.

Padme shifted around restless. In her sleep she walked down a dark path through a thickening mist. She walked into a hanger and saw a little girl holding a young Leia's hand waving good-bye to her father. "I'll be back soon," is all that Han Solo said as he boarded the Millennium Falcon with Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca howling in back of them. The little girl pulled away from Leia and turned to look at the adult Padme walking towards the dimly lit, fuzzy image.

" _Why can't you fix it_?" the little girl demanded of Padme as the adult looked to the child for answers.

Padme then was walking along another dark path this time with a river of lava beside her. It flowed like water cresting and pooling. No was no one around, no seeming threat to her, she was just strikingly alone. Padme stopped and called out for Uncle Luke but no answer came back. She turned around yelling for him but there was no answer, just her own voice echoing in the distance.

"Where are you!" Padme yelled in her dream saying the words as she sat up abruptly in twilight tinged forest. Ursula moaned at being awakened but went right back to sleep.

Luke looked over at Padme with concern and asked her if she was all right. She nodded then looked around remembering how they ended up in the middle of an ethereal woods so far from where they started. Then she noticed the number in the group was off by one. "Where's Merine," Padme asked Luke.

"She just walked away for a moment, she's all right," he said.

"How do you know that?" Padme asked looking for her blaster and getting up to look. Luke gently held Padme's wrist and assured her Merine was fine. He told Padme he was quite certain of it. Padme sat down on a fallen log. "Nice to be able to sense that kind of thing, huh?" she said returning to her old theme of not being trained in the ways of the Force.

Luke didn't want to argue with her. "Do you want me to go get her?" he asked Padme.

"Yes, yes, I do. And come right back, no dallying," she said as an order even if that had little meaning to him.

Luke got up with a world-weary, "All right."

"Right back, you don't know what's out there," Padme announced insistently.

"Yes, ma'am," he said quietly reacting to Padme's peculiar turn towards maternal instinct, but still trying not to wake the others. Luke walked away with feigned urgency.

Merine sat on a large rock next to a creek handing her feet into the water. She was in fact just fine and looking off into the distance quietly. The reflection of the water intensified the amber light and made her look radiant - in normal light it might have been apparent she had been on a several mile hikes without a comb. She startled at a rustle in the brush then was able to make Luke out in the dimness as he came closer. She smiled tightly wondering if they were going to argue. "Can I sit?" he asked her. She tapped the rock next to her for him to join her. He sat down and looked at the rhythmic ripples she was making in the still water. He looked at the bruises he had left on her arm and apologized again. She smiled and held up her feet pointing out the blisters that actually looked much worse than the bruises, she hardly had proper walking shoes. She smiled at him and said if a couple of bruises were the worst thing that happened to her in the past few days, she would have considered herself a lucky person. She wanted him to be comfortable with her. Luke asked Merine if she believed in luck. She shook her head and looked away.

Luke and Merine sat in silence looking out over the elegant vista; solemn and tranquil as it was.

Padme became agitated sitting by the campfire and shook Nyroy awake. He quickly reached for his blaster then realized there was no threat. "What?" he asked tiredly shading his eyes.

"You keep watch, I'm going to look for them," Padme said standing with her blaster.

"Look for who?" he asked wondering if anything real was going on or she was just being difficult to bother him. Padme walked away as he leaned on his arm deciding the later was true. Then he flopped on his back and starred up towards the sky, the ever-brightest stars peeking through in magenta and amber streaks ever-swirling above. He knew he would never get back to sleep, fitful as it had been.

Merine looked over at Luke and smiled. "Can I ask you a personal question," she asked.

"I suppose," Luke responded with some caution. "There isn't much to know in that area."

"Why won't you train anyone as a Jedi?" she inquired. Luke just quietly looking at the peaceful water before him. "I don't have an agenda here, I just wonder," Merine said looking towards some spot in the distance his eyes seemed settled upon.

Padme had been moving quickly through brush aggravated but stopped and crouched silently to listen when she heard Merine's question. She had heard her ask Luke that especially elusive question for her. If Luke may well have been aware Padme was there, Padme liked to think to herself that her elite tactical skills might give her some edge in staying unnoticed.

"Why? Do you want to be trained too?" Luke asked Merine almost sarcastically. She rolled her eyes at him and kicked water in his direction.

"If I wanted to, I would have found away myself." Without effort and a touch of grace, Merine picked up a small, delicate bloom. She gazed at it intently, as if considering it for a poem, then was able to levitate the flower in her hand and drifted it towards Luke every so delicately. He was genuinely surprised as he tentatively took the tiny blossom dangling in the air.

"I come from a place that swore off warfare. The ways of the Jedi never really fit with that plan," she said plainly. "I studied you because I admired you, the fact you left it all behind. No self-aggrandizement, no glory," she said looking out at the water. "That's what I wanted to learn about and was an argument I made to the council for joining the New Alliance," Merine said drifting back on the moment, perhaps with a touch of regret mixed with resignation. She turned to look at Luke directly and asked, "But perhaps you could just tell me. Instead of some academic trying to decode meanings and imposing my own views and ideals upon choices and actions of someone else in a distance place and time..."

Luke took a moment to think, wondering if he actually wanted to answer her. Merine decided to not wait for an answer. "This is what I think, Luke," she said. He held his hands apart ready to receive her thesis. "Without the Jedi, there is no Sith," she said. "And without the Sith, there are no Jedi, not very complicated really and some would argue the necessity for either. Personally, I think the whole notion may over simplify the matter, it's the stuff in between, but what do I know? Life and death choices have not been the stuff of, well, my life, a bit of a hothouse flower," she said with self-deprecation.

Luke smiled to himself. "Something like that, perhaps not quite as methodical though," he said and looked at Merine. "Perhaps there is destiny and we have to accept it, but if it's only an illusion…" he trailed off seeming lost in memory or thought.

Luke glanced in back of him and turned back to Merine. "I had no choices," he said to Merine as if asking her to understand. Merine nodded, she knew his story but suspected he wasn't saying this for her sake.

"I wouldn't quite say that, when you were faced with terrible, even torturous choices, you had insight into something else, something better, bigger than yourself," Merine said with genuine conviction.

"I had my father's work and my master's work to do. At what point is that work actually finished? When do I become myself?" he asked not expecting any answer. "When I was young, I didn't know, but my path was determined for me, and I couldn't see it. I thought it was all about me," he continued almost in a dream.

"But you succeeded!" Merine interrupted.

"And what? Recreate the same circumstances again? In a generation, in a thousand years? What meaning do all the losses have with the lives and dreams gone too soon, not even dreamed, if it all that remains is the same, the same heartbreaks essentially unremembered for being the same ones? The same patterns, the same things time and again, on a wheel?"

Merine closed her eyes and nodded in agreement. "I want my sister have choices, your niece, all of them, who think they actually do. I want them all to have choices, not the burden of everything came before, but that seems to much a trick, even a slight of hand, like I'm kidding myself."

Merine paused and breathed in, then locked her dewy eyes with Luke's stellar blue orbs. "She's terrified of losing you, you know" Merine glanced towards the ground sadly.

"And that shouldn't be a weapon of the dark side, just something that passes with time, like it should, like is normal, not for predators," Luke said.

Padme withdrew from the brush and moved stealthily back to the campfire. She didn't want to hear anymore as Luke and Merine's soft voices faded in the distance.

Luke held his hand out almost shyly and Merine set her hand in his, back to palm, as a mirror image over the other. Slowly they intertwined fingers one by one. Both felt a little young again but as if to answer the silence, Merine said, "But it's not our turn, it's theirs." Luke smiled and nodded.

 **Longings for What Might Have Been, Subjunctive Time**

Geren led the group through the highlands. The dense forest spilled out in back of the tired retinue. Below them were cascades of muted green and sage held still in the constancy of amber light. Wind blew in gusts and the liquid sapphire of a sliver of royal blue sky revealed solemn, distant stars to the back of them.

The high grass and flowers swayed with the wind and had there not been the tragedy behind them and urgency in front of them, they might have noted the remarkable beauty obvious to the most clinical or mechanical of minds. The grass moved like waves on the ocean. Other than Geren and the droids, the others didn't notice the slight changing of the light with movement.

The great distance gained by intense effort left Padme, Luke, Nyroy, Ursula, and Merine in a near constant state of lethargy, breathing heavily and looking down towards the ground, now just moss receding in back of them.

They came to an area protected by an outcropping of crystalline rock and Geren turned and said they should camp there. No one had enough sense of time to disagree, let alone inclination to do so. Ursula sat on a log and moaned her tiredness.

"I guess we need firewood," Padme said tripping as she walked towards a stand of trees.

"I'll get it," Merine volunteered and walked with quickening energy in front of Padme.

"Thank you," Padme said, she stopped, and sat on the ground indifferent to wherever might be on the ground. Nyroy plopped down next to her exhausted.

"You shouldn't go alone," Luke shouted after Merine, jumping up to follow her. Nyroy flopped onto his back.

Merine collected twigs in the stand of trees while a breeze created a whirlwind of leaves around her. She looked around not for caution but for someone. Luke came up in back of her and if she was somewhat startled, she was also relieved he had followed her as she hoped. If she had had an image in her head of an idealized young man showered in twilight, perfect and beautiful, as many young men looked out to the sea or horizon before him, she was struck that it hadn't saddened her to know Luke Skywalker was something of a human being with age and laments. This moved her in a way she had not expected nor imagined.

Neither hesitated nor contemplated obligations or traditions as he grabbed her around the waist. She was as quick to pull his face to hers as they kissed as if they never had anyone before in their entire lives. There was a hunger erupting.

Merine heard the sound of distant space ships cruising along the horizon, breaking the atmosphere, and brought her head down sadly, resting her forehead against his as if to share thoughts without words. Realizing how breathless he was becoming, Luke pulled back from the intense affection. They just stood there for moment touching hands at arms' length. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

Later the whole group slumbered around the campfire. Luke lay looking up at the sky in tall grass stalks near Merine while the rest were further up a slope near an outcropping in hopes in might reflect back some the heat from a small flickering fire. Merine was curled up in a ball and sound asleep.

Luke looked over at the fire as ashes and cinders swirled upward with the wind. He looked at Padme dreaming some dream then swatting at a bug. Padme searched around for her bag with the goo candy, found the desired substance, and then started chewing. She noticed Luke looking at her and smiled at him if in a sad kind of way and rolled over to sleep again. Luke looked back at the fire and thought of his father's funeral pyre, the dark mask melting in flames. He touched Merine's hair and drifted to sleep himself as Nyroy kept watch off in the distance.

Without illumination or glow, Anakin Skywalker walked from a stand of trees, sat down next to Luke, and then looked over at Padme. Anakin looked at the same fire and thought of the same funeral pyre as it reflected in his eyes. They sat there silently and at peace.

 **Passages**

Geren led the group out of the highlands to a stone passageway so slim in would make most any creature claustrophobic. Adding to the discomfort was the sheer height of the cliffs on either side. The apex of the rock formations appeared fuzzy from smoke diffusing through the atmosphere and creating smog high above. The sunlight was brighter if only incrementally but also different for the particles in the air. The rosy pinks and ambers had given way to tarnished auburns and sepia. They had to walk single file, the front of the line unable to communicate with the end. If C3P0 managed one dent after another, L3L5 seemed to have the hardest task in navigating the tight passage. Being able to float and fly might have been an advantage in most circumstances, but in trying to get feedback on the actual topography they were traversing for the little droid was almost impossible as the dense rock echoed back sensor images creating havoc with L3L5's programming. Finally, R2D2 had to pull L3L5 along on a string like a balloon.

There was little conversation as the confinement created a situation where only those in the middle would be heard by all. Padme followed in back of Geren and asked how much longer the path was. There was no seeing from where they came or where they were going through the curving and circuitous pass. "It's not that much further, I think," Geren said with some hesitation. "This isn't the usual way we get to the Valley of Antiquity," he said.

"Flying would make more sense," Padme said with no irony.

"The good news is, we haven't seen anything else flying," Nyroy said in back of Padme.

"True enough," Geren agreed. Merine followed Nyroy with Luke in back of her then Ursula. They had a hard time hearing what was being said, but both Luke and Merine were somewhat indifferent to strategic concerns at the moment. C3P0 clanked along in back of Luke followed by L3L5 being pulled along as R2D2'a carnival prize.

Nyroy projected his voice forward so Geren might hear him asking what facilities were available in this valley. Nyroy suggested that by the valley's name, it did sound rather old. Geren explained that the Valley of Antiquity was an abandoned settlement from thousands of years before his people ever came. The government of Dusk was never clear on who the previous inhabitants had been or why they left. They had built a large Institution to study the ruins and perhaps know something about it all. Both communication and spacecraft were available at the facility.

Luke looked around at the others to see if they felt the slight rumbling he did. Pebbles felt from perches too high above to see. They all pressed against the pass' wall to avoid the stones. Only Geren's and Merine's faces read a deeper concern than that inspired by a minor tremor on the others. Merine took Luke's hand and there was more to her grasp than ardent infatuation. If he sensed something was wrong beyond stones falling from a cliff, Luke knew he was becoming clouded in his awareness of most everything. He was just glad she was holding his hand.

Padme noted Geren's tension but chose not to question what she could do nothing about. The smog appeared to be getting thinner and the sunlight brighter. Finally, the thin passage opened onto a great expansive valley with a jarring suddenness. The semiarid area of the valley before them reached for several days walk to the other side with high, pointed mountains. The twin moons of Dusk appeared to be painted in the sky above in a deepening blue.

The group was high on a ridge with a difficult walk down, but they all took some relief in the fact the direction was down. Luke walked up to the ridge to see the great Institution Geren spoke of amongst the great ruins and archeological sites. Merine knew she should stop wafting into the molten glow of infatuated thoughts, but still noted Luke's eyes were blue like the regal blue line of sky just near the horizon. Then she wondered why she was worried about it at all. What else actually mattered? Luke looked at the twin moons hovering in silent serenity over a crest. He seemed somewhere else for a moment, bathed in twilight before the two ancient satellites.

 **The Valley of Antiquity**

Luke looked back from the crest at the edge of valley to the rest of the group. Padme, Geren, and Nyroy all seemed somewhat forlorn looking out at the further expanse in front of them. Every inch they moved forward seemed to unroll a carpet for them to further go. Even C3P0 could empathize with this sentiment in his own way. Only Merine with her big, enamored green eyes seemed happy for farther, because it meant just a bit more time. Padme kicked stones down the embankment as sport.

Far into the valley, Geren led the group into the grand Institute with gleaming lines and high ceilings all intended to inspire intellect and imagination. Nothing stirred. There were no voices or crackle of electronics to suggest any inhabitation. Articles were left about as if the occupants had left in a hurry. "I guess they've been here," Padme said looking around with her blaster drawn.

"Maybe they just got warning and evacuated quickly," Geren said almost wishfully. Nyroy let his weapon fall to his side when he saw something that made him sick to his stomach. He knew he was coming close to the edge of what he was willing to look at as a soldier.

"What is it?" Padme asked. She walked to where Nyroy was and looked down at a very young person, obviously running out of terror, with a huge gash in her head lying in a pool of her own blood, pale with recent rigor mortis. Padme appreciated Nyroy's reaction but tried to stay focused in the safer places of training and detachment.

"How did they get here so fast?" she said frustrated.

"Maybe _they_ didn't, _it_ did," Nyroy said ruefully. Geren looked down at the student. "These were supposed to be better times. It's like if we don't tear at each other, the galaxy tears at us. Why is this happening…?" he said.

Padme looked over at Luke and Merine as a student would teachers for an explanation to a consistently baffling math problem. "I don't know what to do anymore. How do you fight something tiny you don't understand but has the power to kill millions?" Padme said. "It doesn't care who's innocent, but who do you fight when everyone is innocent, or not at all, I don't know anymore." Padme came up to Luke in a vulnerable way that was both unusual and completely sincere. "Can't you do anything about it?" Padme asked him directly. This pained him.

"I really don't have any answers to this. With years, I wouldn't have one thing to teach you about any of this, I don't know" he said wishing he had more to offer.

"What do we fight," Padme said again realizing the question would remain in the realm of the rhetorical.

"Perhaps we don't fight," Merine said.

"Pacifism, it's great until there's none of you to stand for it or you're standing in front of someone with a blaster," Padme said to Merine.

"I think we moved beyond that a bit ago," Merine said.

Geren composed himself and decided all he could do was try and think and not feel. He announced they were going to go to the main transmitters of the building, make contact directly with the Alliance, and find out exactly what was going on and that he wasn't ready to give up yet.

The group walked into the impressive building of glass and stone. They weren't shocked, not even startled, when the sound of smashing glass permeated the building. Weapons were drawn and prepared as they looked around for the source of the sound. None could be found; it seemed to have been made solely for the purpose of letting them know they weren't alone. Geren led them down a stairwell into the lower levels of the complex. Several football fields' worth of machinery and storage space stretched out in front of them. There were plenty of places to hide, and plenty of places to be attacked from.

The dim light did not make obvious the corpses strewn around various consoles at first. Geren realized he didn't have the luxury of reacting to the dead anymore, even if he knew the people who had been killed. A hissing sound behind Padme caused her to immediately crouch and turn firing only to realize it wasn't a snake or any of its kin, but a child infected with the disease, with fangs. The child fell back into a pile of unorganized, discarded equipment. Padme felt a kind of emptiness she never had imagined.

Geren went through drawers filled with various electronic artifacts and drew out what looked strikingly like a light saber. He activated it and a perfect pale green beam emitted from the hand piece. He looked at Luke and half smiled. "You don't have to be a Jedi to use one of these, right?" Geren asked Luke.

"I don't recall that being a rule," Luke said holding his own light saber a light.

"They've obviously infiltrated, come this way," Geren said leading the group down a dark hall towards a service elevator.

Screeching could be heard in back of them. It was different than the animals in the hall; it was the screams of people thrust into their own personal version of hell.

Geren pushed the group through service doors into a utility stairwell. The stairwell swirled down into a deep abyss towards an excavation site of a bizarre cave, that once might have been inhabited, with fossilized relics, some seeming obvious such as pot shards and obsidian knap, while others appeared to have had some functional purpose other than art, but that use was not clear from the form. Buried within the rock where veins of a self-illuminating element that might have been mistaken for gold from afar, but certainly was not close up, it actually seemed to pulsate, but not as something living.

The crazed people and beasts lost track of their prey for a moment as Geren waved the group down single file on the impromptu stairwell. "What is this?" Padme asked brushing the strange veins of glowing substance and looking down into the cave that had been at the surface of the planet millenniums before.

"Don't touch it," Geren said to her pulling her hand back. "We don't know what it is. It hasn't seemed harmful, but it hasn't been cataloged anywhere else in the galaxy."

"You can't analyze the molecular structure?" Nyroy said incredulously, wondering if Geren's planet still actually used something as arcane as cold fusion as an energy source.  
Geren looked back at Nyroy with a touch of annoyance leading the group further down the stairs.

"Of course, we can. Like I said, it hasn't been cataloged. Some of the researchers started having strange reactions so we held off on further excavation until we could better design safety protocols."

"What strange reactions?" Nyroy asked a bit perturbed they had taken this particular escape route. Geren hesitated a moment before answering.

"Clairvoyance, prescience" he said plainly. Nyroy and Padme rolled their eyes at each other.

"Then somebody should be sticking their head in this stuff so we can figure out how to get out of here," Padme said with disdain.

A small earthquake shook the entire building and rocks and loose tools fell down the stairwell. They all braced against railings for balance, although C3P0 did manage to fall down a flight of stairs. Luke and Merine grasped for the other's hand and they're eyes locked.

"I've seen this before," Luke said as he pressed close to the wall in spite of the warning to avoid the strange substance, it seemed less dangerous than falling or being hit by debris.

"Where?" Merine asked half expecting the answer as she mouthed it with Luke.

"On Tatooine, there were veins in several places. It was considered rather useless except as a poor light source," Luke said. Merine had a look in her eyes like she had just been given a clue as to one of the great mysteries of the universe, which she suspected she had. She looked over at Nyroy who she thought might be on the same track of thought.

"It is environmental," Merine said with a sense of vindication that had little meaning in the moment. She looked at Luke and Padme as one might look with affection at a lab rat that will yield a Nobel Prize for Science right after it is dissected. This made both Luke and Padme uncomfortable.

"It's not the actual exposure to midichlorians but exposure to whatever this is that causes the heightened production," Nyroy said as if he had missed the answer to two plus two.

"Yes," Merine answered. "And with multi-generational exposure the reductive aspect in the genetic coding is exponentially multiplied," she said.

"It's so obvious," Nyroy said. "The sensitivity to the subspace interface rises to the level of self-generation as with Darth…Anakin Skywalker," Nyroy said almost excited by the conversation as they inched further down the cavern.

"Exactly!" Merine answered. "I would have stayed longer on Tatooine but, well, I didn't just blister, I got infected. It was not a pretty sight."

Finally, Padme had enough. She looked over at Luke who could genuinely empathize with her at the moment, a rare moment they shared, while Geren just shook his head confused. "Listen, people, we need soldiers here, not geeks," Padme said with all seriousness. She looked at Nyroy. "I get it with her," Padme said pointing at Merine, "She was weird to start with, but you should stay focused, soldier," she said glaring at Nyroy in all seriousness.

"Yes, ma'am," Nyroy answered realizing Padme might be right in the situation but wondering if it mattered either way. Geren looked at Merine and Nyroy genuinely troubled trying to understand what they were talking about.

"Are you saying there's no Force?" he asked wondering if he really wanted to deal with his faith being shaken in the face of destruction and potential death. Even Luke looked at the two of them wondering what Merine and Nyroy were driving at.

"Of course, there is. Isn't it kind of obvious? It's just another way of describing it," Merine answered with a degree of compassion and regret that she failed to be sensitive to the people around her. She couldn't expect them all to keep up.

The ground rumbled again and Geren lost his footing. He fell off the stairwell several yards to the ground. It wasn't far enough to be lethal, but in the dim light they could not see him below and he did not answer when called. Padme started the charge down the stairs. Luke jumped down as he was able to, proving the existence of the Force if only for himself. Padme called down to Luke who did answer her, but Geren was nowhere to be seen. Padme led Nyroy and the rest down the stairs quickly.

Luke walked into the peculiar dugout cave with the luminescent veins of the unknown element. The dim glow from the element made him feel somewhat odd, as when Yoda was training him, when he was in that dark cave back on Dagobah. He saw Geren just sitting beyond him, transfixed on something obscured to Luke's sight. As Luke rounded a corner to see what Geren was looking at, he saw a group of diseased people from the palace, including Geren's father, all collected into a writhing mass, but for King Gregor. The king held out his hand for Geren to come with him. Geren seemed to be considering this as he glanced back at Luke.

"Why fight it if you can't win?" Gregor said. "There comes a time to let go," he said to his son in a paternal yet evil way. Geren had the old light saber with him and looked down at it and then up at Luke. "I don't want it to be the last thing I do," Geren said to Luke as if an explanation for inaction. Padme was coming up in back of Luke yelling to blast the creatures and fire whizzed by. Luke understood Geren looking up at him for direction. Luke understood the curse and the damage, and quickly dispatched the king and the writhing mass of infected people from the palace, including the gossipy courtiers who had pushed Nyroy along to the ceremonies. Padme berated Geren for not taking action, but Luke took her arm gently and shook his head. She stopped saying anything at all.

Geren stepped over the mass of diseased flesh indifferently and walked towards a door that led outside. Merine walked up to Luke who looked down at the gruesome pile of flesh, knowing he felt no accomplishment, no pride, in killing these people, threatening or not. She looked at him a bit teary eyed and said plainly, "I love you," then walked away. She hadn't said it so he might say it back. It was a simple statement of fact and nothing else.

Padme followed Geren into an excavated quarry thirty stories down from ground level. An ancient city lay before them. It had temples and towers to observe the heavens as they had been millenniums ago; then small buildings, some collapsed with time. The most peculiar aspect of this "city" was the forms of human like beings a thousand-fold, but not the remains of people lost in cosmic tragedy or frozen by some ancient curse but made of reddish clay. The site was a testament to some ancient lost belief that no one living knew, but the statues still gave form to some strange spiritual quest somewhere back in the river of time. Nyroy, Ursula, C3P0, R2D2, L3L5, followed out. Merine stepped into the crowd of clay people. Luke walked outside last.

The surreal scene inspired a moment of actual awe. "This is bizarre," Padme said, "What is it?" she asked Geren.

"We never really knew. Just theories…" he said. Above them, X-Wings screeched above them in the sky. They moved past without making any attack. "Is it recon?" Nyroy asked. Merine and Geren looked at each other, then up towards the horizon.

The sun began to rise off in the distance as shafts of light cut through to places it had not touched since the planet's primordial birth.

 **The Hour of Dawn**

"Are there any ships at all to get us out of here?" Merine asked Geren as terror crossed her face. They looked around the desolate landscape.

"There was a prototype they were working on. It wasn't even tested. Still, it might be the only thing fast enough to make a difference, it could be dangerous," he replied to her without feeling.

Nyroy took Geren by the arm and pulled him to face his face. "What are they doing?" Nyroy asked ready to kill if he didn't get an answer.

Geren gave Nyroy the respect of answering him directly, "They didn't find a cure." Nyroy let go of Geren's arm and asked what that meant. Merine had the look of someone watching what they always believed to be impossible but true, a black swan swimming in lava. Ships that weren't supposed to sink, buildings that weren't supposed to fall, decisions that weren't supposed to need to be made…

"Sterilization," she answered Nyroy.

"How?" he demanded. "With a certain set of conditions, we knew how to bring about a hypernova," she said.

"That's impossible," Nyroy said, "no one brings a star to their own will. Even the Empire, the Emperor, didn't dream of that kind of power."

"With trace remnants of a neutron star contained in a magnetized plasma field, that parts rather basic, it only takes a simple collision to cause the cascade…" Merine said plainly.

"That's what you gave to him? How to do that?" Luke asked Merine while indicating Geren.

"The President asked us to. We've known how to since before I was born. It's why we were so diligent in staying out of the shadow of the Empire," she said without inflection.

"That could destroy a quarter of the systems in the entire Alliance," Nyroy said appalled.

Padme looked off to her side, "The greatest good for the greatest number," she said, "what good is it if no one survives?"

Nyroy punched one of the old clay statues in rage and it shattered into dust.

The ground began to shake slightly, then with a jarring seismic blast. Statues began to crumble all around them. "The star's gravitational field is changing," Geren said. Amongst the crumbling statues diseased people from the elevator and palace came into view circling around all of them with predatory intent. Wolf-creatures gathered and snarled in back of the stricken people. Padme and Nyroy were well prepared to start blasting at the diseased creatures while Ursula just picked up rocks and pounded with unchecked fury. They were all on death ground. Geren swung the light saber as a novice would, but his enemies were not warriors and he numbed the sickness he felt killing people he once knew.

Luke knew he had to find it in himself to be a Jedi again. He struck down a swath of creatures so efficiently even the crazed creatures backed off in fear of him. The ground rumbled again. The sun came over the horizon and appeared to grow in size. Heavy winds swept through the field as the atmosphere became electrified. The sound of earth cracking echoed in the distance.

 **A Star Grows in the Distant Skies**

On Olim, Icara stood in bright starlight on a tilting balcony of one the elegant spires piercing the sky as if in defiance of the now ruined city. Below her the corpses of citizens who had fought, citizens who had become infected, and creatures from parts beyond now floated in rancid water between places of common activity that had functioned with the ordinary routines of life just days before: bakers, jewelers, technicians…

Warily, most of the people who had taken shelter down in the caverns came out of various buildings with watery eyes. They wandered around with the hollowed out look of those returning when a storm has swept through and washed their world away. They all had had to fight, there was blood on them. This was not part of their culture or view of themselves, yet they had to soldiers for a moment, mercenaries to circumstance. Icara looked up to the heavens and shared in the collective grief.

A pinprick of light that had always been a part of the night sky of Olim twinkled brighter and bigger. Sad eyes cast up at the glittery spectacle, reflected back in their wide eyes, sparkling with tears. Icara looked down at the dumbfounded people below and wondered if she had made the right choices all along, in her life, as a wife, mother, teacher, and leader. An unobtrusive signal went off a few times before Icara noticed it. She brought out a portable holographic interface from her cloak the image of Leia emerged in her hand.

"I'm so sorry," Leia said, knowing full well it was not enough.

"I understand," Icara muttered mechanically. "Truly, I am glad not to be in your position right now," Icara said with genuine sympathy growing in her dazed consciousness.

"Thank you, I don't have the proper words, and I should," is all Leia could think to say.

"There aren't words, Leia. Make sure it is worth the cost. Make sure we are remembered," Icara said. Leia only nodded and Icara turned off the signal. Icara didn't have much more strength to comfort those from far off worlds and space stations and wished her planet had been the island unto itself it was originally planned to be, that all planets seem to be when walking upon them.

Ridge walked up in back of Icara from a dark doorway. She looked over at him and smiled the comforting smile of a mother even when she knows she has nothing behind it to offer. Iyla came up in back of Ridge and put her arms around him for mutual comfort. She looked sadly at her mother. "What do we do now?" Iyla asked Icara.

"I don't think there's anything to do," Ridge volunteered the answer. Icara looked down and then up at Ridge.

"Start getting everyone underground and all the supplies you can find," she said with authority.

Ridge looked at Icara perplexed. "Will it matter?" he asked.

"Perhaps we should just stay here," Iyla said sorrowfully.

Icara stiffened her back and looked them both directly in the eyes. "I don't know if it will help anything or if there is any hope. But just the same, we do it anyway. The more I've learned in my life, the less I'm certain of knowing a damn thing," Icara said. Ridge and Iyla didn't understand what she meant but moved quickly to do what she had asked. "Try, even when it's futile, it's all we're really doing all along, we just see it differently," she said after them as they disappeared into a doorway and the balcony creaked with the change in weight.

 **The Alternate Solution**

Geren shouted for Padme to follow him through a semiarid field. He led the whole group towards a launching facility beyond the quarry. They were faced with making their way up steep ramps set up only as temporary structures that hadn't been tended.

Luke followed at the rear of the group watching for any threats. He held Merine's hand, fingers intertwined, towards his chest, if not for safety, to know where she was, with the light saber in his other dark gloved hand.

"I'm sorry," she said to him. He looked at her perplexed. "I don't blame you," he said as if that should be obvious to her. "There's no willful intent behind a disease," he said.

"Not for that," she said. "For it all, there should be more time in between," she said looking into his eyes intoxicated by him but sad.

They ran furiously through a grassy field. At its center was an experimental ship seemingly made up of a series of high thin circular arches connected together with little mechanical apparatus of any kind showing on the outside. The ship hardly appeared to be a spacecraft at all.

The ground trembled in waves. The ancient ruins back in the quarry, particularly the astronomical tower, had a similar form to the strange, prototype ship, the modern mimicking the ancient.

"What have you all made here?" Nyroy asked looking at the ship admiringly, a slight glint of hope in his eyes. The peculiarly designed vessel loomed above him as a glorious destination as the sun grew larger behind him. The star's color darkening in the sky, a kind of fiery crimson arches and loops emanating from it.

The field was something of a garden of ancient stone ruins without obvious function or meaning, different styles seemingly erupting over time. Almost as a kind of mockery of ambition: small wild flowers grew up alongside the old ruins and new prototype spacecraft, oblivious to the desire to live beyond life in some form or another, from the religious and poetic to the scientific and glory seeking. The ground shivered violently and a fissure cracked opened in the field, just missing the ship but compromising its balance causing it to lean as the sound of bending metal cut the air with a high-pitched frequency. The fissure in the ground grew with breathtaking speed and with a deafening cracking sound as it cut a path by the small group running with no other option even if the earth could open up anywhere around them.

From the quarry beyond emerged ick people and animals following towards whatever living thing without reason. Then they were swallowed up as the ground cracked open. Steam vented out of an arid mountain in the distance that glistened in the ever-brightening sun.

As the group gathered near their peculiar goal, as if out the bowels of a fiery inferno, a pack of wolf-creatures ran over a crest towards them as massive gusher of lava rose behind the beasts, illuminating them, then silhouetting them to blackness.

If the infected people had been temporarily frightened, the infected animals seemed only more aggressive and wild as the apocalypse around them rose up from the planet's nether regions. Other infected people began to run from within the ruins towards the small group and with some odd sense, towards the ship. The growing volcano in the distance created a great storm above it as thunder and lightning cracked in the plumes of clouds it created. Even the moon appeared to become unstable as one of them passed in front of the sun, unfortunately not nearing the size necessary for an eclipse, as the star grew enormous and compromised in stability.

Padme and Nyroy fired at the creatures but made accuracy a secondary priority compared to getting to the ship. The atmosphere itself seemed to grow denser and darker. Ursula could do little but try and move the droids along as quickly as possible. Geren sliced threw a giant, crazed wolf creature as he made it first to the launch pad. He activated coded controls set on the exterior of the ship, which whistled and whined as if struggling to comply.

Luke almost dragged Merine along as he fended off the creatures. The ground rumbled beneath them. Luke turned as he felt Merine fall in back of him. A fissure had cut across the field and her foot got caught before clearing it. He pulled her forward safely as a river of lava swept in through the fissure as a flash flood of melted stone. He was pulling her up by the hand when she gazed up at him terrified. He looked at her perplexed. Then he turned around.

A savage, diseased wolf creature came down on Luke's back pressing him to the ground, its claws wrapping around his neck as it bit down. Luke's light saber fell into the fissure filled with ever faster flowing lava. If he might have survived the injury, Luke became instantly aware he had been infected by the disease the entire galaxy was trying to escape from.

A strange sense of the most peculiar thing overcame Luke at first: blandness, just a banal nothingness. Was it a disease or just some disruption of space and time that defines the vessel of life? He seemed almost calm as the feeling swept over him.

Hysterical, Merine got between Luke and the crazed animal. If she were immune to the creature's horrifying malady for some unknown reason, she wasn't to the claws drawn across her chest and the animal sinking its jagged teeth into her jugular vein. Blood poured forth like rain. Luke grabbed the back of the creature's neck and flung it into the fissure behind them. He tried to fight through the loss of his own faculties as the disease, whatever it was grew through him. He put pressure on Merine's neck trying to stop the flow of blood. She put her hand over his hand in some hope of helping stop the draining away of her own life; then saw the cuts on Luke's chest and neck and the receding light in his eyes in his luminous eyes. She moved her other hand weakly to his face in abject sorrow. He seemed confused by the gesture.

Geren finally managed to get the hatch to the ship to open in part by pulling on the metal itself. Nyroy leapt towards the ship while helping Ursula with the droids. Geren looked over to where Luke and Merine were, pooled in blood on the ground. Padme turned to see. she ran manically towards Luke blasting indiscriminately at the demented creatures and the sick people screaming at something worse than her blaster and the devolving world around them.

If it was only a second, Luke had lost sense of all time and place. He pressed down harder on Merine's wound trying to keep touch with his reality, this reality, but he felt himself walking somewhere else. He walked through a desert and looked at the skeletonized remains of two people, he thought they were his aunt and uncle, but wasn't sure anymore. Did he have an aunt and uncle? He was then wandering on a catwalk of a city in the clouds and a dark hand reached out to him. He wasn't sure if it was his father or Darth Vader, or if there was any difference in Luke's diminishing haze, perhaps it was something else altogether. Why didn't he take that dark hand he wondered? He couldn't remember why.

Merine weakly moved Luke's face towards hers. He looked at her with confusion. Through tears she said, "Kiss me," and he did lightly, then she just let go as he continued to hold her. Merine's dying didn't seem real to him. He wondered why he hadn't taken that dark gloved hand held out to him. He wondered where Merine had gone, and if she still might be there had he just reached out that one time to the darkness and pretended what the self wants is truly enough. Perhaps he had misunderstood the order of things all along. Perhaps his sister wouldn't have cried for days when a smuggler disappeared. Maybe there would be no pain at all. The blandness had an alluring aspect as blood vessels broke within him; he didn't have will over his own body anymore as he bruised from within. Luke doubled over in anguished pain over Merine's body. Padme sprinted up to Luke, screaming his name as if to call him back to life.

Luke knew enough to say, "Don't touch me," in a deepening voice that made too plain he was infected. He inched towards the edge of the fissure. Padme held out her hand, "Come with me," she pleaded, "It's just time before they can help. This is all wrong. It's just time before there is something to help. I'm so sorry about Merine." He looked at her confused and appeared to drift into a kind of personal hell only he could see. Looking down at the limp body in his arms, he was uncertain if the blood he was soaked with was hers or his own. Then he was back in his walking haze for a moment, running towards the Millennium Falcon on the Death Star, if he couldn't have remembered the names, he knew he had been in that place and looked over at an old man who drew his weapon up before the same familiar dark being that held out his hand to Luke then or now, he couldn't fix upon a time: that dark mechanical hand struck the old man down. Obi-Wan Kenobi looked at Luke in a certain way, with his letting go to fate. It was as if old Ben knew something Luke could not have understood back then, but in that particular moment when Luke held Merine in his arms at the edge of a fissure, and his needful niece called out his name, he could understand Ben at that moment. They were sharing that moment. This moment had already been.

Luke looked up and thought it was strange that Padme didn't notice the woman standing right in back of her. Padme Amidala, young and beautiful as she ever was, she seemed familiar to Luke, perhaps his mother, he didn't know, everything ached in him, pains and injuries that had passed away with time all came back with a grueling intensity they never had before. Padme Amidala just looked at Luke sadly, mourning the son she never knew, and she turned and walked towards the ever-expanding sun. Luke looked with confusion at Padme Solo again, then had a moment of clarity, and just said simply with sincerity, "I love you," to his niece, a tear mixing with the blood starting to run down from one of his eyes. With the same look old Ben had before Darth Vader struck him down, Luke fell back with Merine's body still clutched in his arms. The river of lava was quick in erasing them from time.

Padme looked at the space where Luke and Merine had been almost trying to will the moment back. Like retinal retention, like the light of dusk that only arrives after the true setting of the sun; he remained with her a moment longer than he actually was there. Time sputtered. She held out her hand like he might take it still. If she could not scream, she had emptied out too much to receive the passion of pain, she only mouthed, "good-bye, I love you too," and knelt down on both knees staring down into the glowing fissure. There was nothing beneath but the quickening flow of molten rock. A small flower seemed to definitely float above the inferno, then burst into flames and was nothing but a few ashes and a faint waft of smoke.

Nyroy screamed from the ship, "Come on Padme, or I swear I will leave you!" Ursula howled in desperate agony. Geren held out his hand waving for Padme to run. "Come on, they're gone," he yelled. Padme regained herself and ran towards the ship, the ground crumbling in back of her creating a widening lava sea as she ran. The fissure widened more and she had to jump through the beginnings of the ship's exhaust to reach Geren's hand and get yanked into the ship. The hatch snapped shut and the ship launched at an amazing speed with only slight entrails where it had been quickly fading.

The volcano beyond erupted with such astonishing power, for a moment, it blotted out the ever-enlarging sun and all was darkness.

 **Luminous Flight**

The strange prototype ship moved away from the planet Dusk at such a speed as to make it ghost like, the ever-expanding star eating the planets around it still shrinking from view behind the vessel and disappearing.

Within the ship solely designed for science and not comfort, Nyroy and Geren sat at the peculiar control panel without buttons or flashing lights, but seemingly abstract waves of color moving about a screen affected by finger touch and even the mere intention of movement. If Geren was familiar with the design, Nyroy had to watch for a moment to have any feeling for the navigation of the ship. Had it been in another situation, Nyroy would have been thrilled by the advancement in spaceflight, but he was simply glad that he spent too much time as a technophile and had some vague notion what the people of Dusk had been designing. Nyroy pressed his fingers down on the panel and appeared to be making some changes to orientation of the ship. Geren and Nyroy looked on the screen above them, giving them a view of where they had been. Dusk's large star collapsed into a miniscule point of light, emptiness around it.

"You estimated for the edge of the horizon?" Geren asked Nyroy.

Nyroy shook his head, "Best that I can guess…" he said. Nyroy moved towards the back of the ship. Padme sat on the floor motionless; there were no accommodations for passengers. Ursula strapped the droids down with whatever was available that might suit the purpose. C3P0 struggled as if being bound. Ursula howled and the droid quickly complied. What were essentially magnetized bungee cords being all Ursula had to work with.

Nyroy looked at Padme and apologized. "What for?" she asked. "You were right, you shouldn't have waited," she said plaintively.

"Shut up," Nyroy said without sympathy. He grabbed her hand to pull her up. "What's the point, if no one survives," he said repeating her words. "And I want to stay home and do nothing, so you can do the remembering and chatting," he said. "I'm sorry you never got the training you wanted," he said quietly to Padme with a soft compassion that was barely audible.

"Some things may better be left behind in time, we were there before," she said with a sense of calm. Nyroy waved to Ursula to follow him to the front of the ship. "It's not over by a very long shot," he said. L3L5 tried to reattach the cord securing the droid to the wall that had come loose. L3L5 mechanically whined as Ursula moved away without fixing her makeshift strap for the droid.

Ursula and Padme strapped themselves in back of Nyroy and Geren. They looked up at the screen at the small white dot that had been the dusk system simply disappear. The space in front of them appeared as just a glow. "Did we angle off the projected jets?" Nyroy asked Geren. Geren looked at Nyroy, Padme, and then Ursula.

"Honestly," he said, "I hope so."

"You know, there's absolutely no reason not to be reassuring at this moment," Nyroy said ruefully.

Geren nodded. "Absolutely dead on! I have no doubt of the accuracy of all the coordinates, complete precision," Geren said with false bravado, sarcasm, and a touch of mirth.

"Thank you, was that so hard? But did you have to say, dead on?" Nyroy retorted. Nyroy looked down at the strange multi-colored panel and saw its color drain to gray. "Here it comes," Nyroy said.

"At least we tried," Geren said looking at each of them as comrades in arms.

"Shut up, shut up, all of you," Nyroy said with real passion. "If no one has anything positive to say, just keep it to yourselves!" he insisted. Ursula howled agreement. Padme smiled and put her hand on Nyroy's shoulder and just thanked him. She smiled at Geren who nodded with admiration towards her as they locked eyes.

If they were a million light years from where Dusk had been, shock waves still made the ship vibrate so violently it seemed as if it would tear apart.

In front of the ship, where space itself went beyond hyperspace to a mere glowing blur, it suddenly seemed time itself was moving slower than they were, let a substance to be held in. Then there was stillness and silence, all just bland gray in front of them.

A nearly infinite thing beyond an explosion began to churn out jets of plasma mass formed from the cosmic dust of Dusk went hypernova. It was more than power being released, but an expulsion of space itself, ripping at its own fabric and billowing out. The dance of dust and light had a balletic expression in its destructive force as it began to swirl back in on itself in a glorious dance of color and light.

There was no gravity, no movement, no time in the ship. Padme, Nyroy, and Geren simply sat there suspended, young and old, remembering and knowing the shape of things all at once and not at all.

Geren thought he felt himself get up and walk back into the Perihelion Palace in all its glory. He looked down at Merine handing him the little square with odd markings, sadly saying good-bye. She pulled her hand away and ran for the door running out into the twilight. Geren's father rested his hand on Geren's shoulder and asked him to remember him well. Geren turned towards his father, but he wasn't there. The Palace was empty and he was alone. Experiments and objects from the ship littered the floor of the great hall.

Nyroy perceived himself standing up and stepping out of the ship into a grand museum in the Capitol. His wife called for him not to be late, the children were waiting for him. Through a hall of artifacts, he ran and ran towards her voice, the hallway seeming to lengthen. He stopped and turned around to see them standing in back of him. His children were grown; they waved and walked away from him amongst objects and experiments from the ship littering the floor of the museum. He noticed the displays were full of weapons. First ancient stone ones, then like he used, like Luke had used, but somehow, they were all very, very old artifacts.

Padme felt she was floating in a star field for a moment, not certain she was corporal or some kind of spirit or ghost. Planets whirled by in some strange, elegant dance and then she just sat down in a desert expanse, quietly, lightly, no chaos about her, on a crest with two suns setting in back of her. Objects and experiments from the ship littered the desert floor around her, the same ones but from a slightly different angle that Geren and Nyroy saw.

Han Solo sat down casually next to her as if they had always been there. She looked at him and asked plainly, "Where have you been?"

"Here," he answered plainly and laughed as if that should be quite obvious. They looked at the sub terrarium homestead in front of them with moisture vaporators in the distance. Near the buildings, a young Luke Skywalker looked through macrobinoculars with C3P0 standing next to him. No conversation could be heard as Luke and C3P0 moved indoors but Luke seemed agitated by something as C3P0 followed.

"Is he all right?" Padme asked Han.

"Yes," Han answered confidently.

"And am I?" she asked not really expecting an answer.

"Yes," Han answered again as if she were as dumb as mud. "You know, Padme, it's not about fixing the past. It's about hope for the future. Now get out of here, you're bothering me, kid," he said. She smiled and stood silhouetted between the double suns looking down at her own father and then off into the distance bathed in warm, pink light.

Abruptly the gravity returned in the ship and yanked Padme, Geren, Nyroy, Ursula, and the droids down with a thud and crashing sounds interrupting the profoundly peaceful place they had been, even if they had been nowhere at all. Geren looked at the control panel and the star field in front of them. Nyroy realized he needed to start breathing again. No one said anything, they just looked one to another for assurance they were really there and really alive. Ursula poked Padme repeatedly. Padme just nodded, yes.

 **Stardust and Something Else**

Leia stood in her conference chamber looking out at a massive black hole with gamma ray jets emitting from opposing sides with spectacular, awing power and gigantism, the Capitol City a far safe distance from the event horizon. She wiped some tears away as she stood alone in the room. The cosmic occurrence was awesomely beautiful and ghastly at the same time as space and matter churned together.

Leia turned to look in back of her as Padme, Geren, Nyroy, Ursula, and the droids were led in by one of her special agents, all solemn, all in black. Padme walked up to her mother and they embraced. Leia couldn't contain her relief that Padme was there with her.

Leia looked over at Geren staring out the grand window with some pathos. Leia understood how he felt. She let go of Padme after a moment and walked up to Geren. "I think it might be insensitive to say I am sorry," Leia said leaning towards Geren. Geren nodded his understanding. "I know what it is to lose your home." Leia looked at Nyroy and nodded at him with respect then patted Ursula on the arm.

Padme looked out the window at the gothic display of the cosmic light show. Leia walked up in back of her. Padme knew Leia was there but didn't take her eyes away from the swirling around the hole in space. "I'm sorry Uncle Luke didn't come back, mother," she said sadly and earnestly.

Leia breathed in deeply and put her hand on Padme's back. "It's just time. We're all the stuff of stardust, and something else…" Leia said to her daughter and herself. Leia stared out the window with sorrow and wonder.

 **The End**

 **Author Notes**

Just as I was falling down the economic ladder with the Great Recession, I decided to try and hide in graduate school for a while. Unfortunately, grad school didn't take long enough. I had wanted to get back into Anthropology, with which I had started my academic career - after a degree in cinema and fifteen years trying to navigate the entertainment industry, but UCLA said 'no,' as did UC Santa Barbara to any excavating again. But USC did say yes and that was the mother ship of all film schools and in my head: _where George Lucas went._ Hadn't even fantasized about such a possibility. I was being called home.

It was like being back in 1977, that happy place I drifted off to when my parents got divorced and my stepmother seemed to need me to either not exist and/or be miserable. And when Hollywood dealt out much the same misery and USC was on the horizon; a galaxy far, far way filled my mind again. It was my happy place to go. And while I struggled with the film industry and other franchises, everyone around _Star Wars_ seemed oddly kind and balanced as far as film people go, which I count myself as one. Before it become cool to say, I would state that if I didn't have a dysfunctional family, I couldn't work here, but alas, they might not have been dysfunctional enough.

After _Revenge of the Sith_ , we were told there would be no more _Star Wars_ films.

And way back, I had read _Splinter of the Mind's Eye_ and was very into it _._ I wasn't mature enough in 1980 to appreciate _The Empire Strikes Back_ and wished the novel had been made instead. Of course I grew into _The Empire Strikes Back_ , but it freaked me out at first. In 2008 I had never read any of the Extended Universe novels other than _Splinter of the Mind's Eye_.

I had my own ideas about what happened to Luke, Leia, and Han and since that wasn't going to be a movie or movies, decided I should write it down as a book as an exercise before graduate school. And it has sat on my computer for years. I hope you like it. It's an alternate universe story, sort of like _Splinter of the Mind's Eye_ , or trying to be anyway.

Cut to: Walking out of the theater after seeing _The Last Jedi_. There were parts of the film I had liked and tried to check my feelings in terms of being envious of Rian Johnson for getting _that_ job. Had some things worked out better in my life, I might have at least been able to work on the film - and I had written my own book a while back.

But one feeling struck me hard leaving the theater in North Hollywood, California, near Van Nuys, I couldn't shake it and was overwhelmed by: _I was just so glad to be back in my own universe_ , and if you've been to North Hollywood or Van Nuys, you know that's saying a lot. Apologies to the Valley, but I live here too.

I did relate to the central female protagonist, Rey. Her life wasn't exciting like Luke's albeit with twists and turns before the sequels, but infinitely sad in a hopeless kind of way. My beloved Luke Skywalker had turned into a jerky film school professor. I really didn't want to be in Rey's world where obviously the population seemed prone to fascism and accepting of it no matter how many sacrifices were made for the greater good. Obviously, the galaxy seemed to prefer imperialism and the eight or so people left from the Rebellion should be talking to real estate agents far, far away. Han and Leia had failed tragically in life. I was glad to be walking back out into my own world, troubled as it was. I felt more hope in my own life and for myself than I did in that particular incarnation of a galaxy far, far away. In that sense, in that _The Last Jedi_ inspired gratitude, it was a good thing. But it sure didn't feel like 1977. But it didn't feel like _The Empire Strikes Back_ either. Things were still recoverable from the 1980 film. I was sad in 2005 when George Lucas said there would be no more _Star Wars_ films, but I felt now, no matter how many movies Disney makes with the drifting arial logo and the beginning scroll, it really was over.

I get _The Last Jedi_ made people sad, if I there seems to be a virulent obsession with such. I think my own view of Luke's galaxy thirty years hence, with some oddly similar devices in the recent films, I did take out a copyright in 2009 so I can say, it was on paper, is a bit more hopeful. It's still more complicated than the endings of _A New Hope_ and _Return of the Jedi._ It's about what you make after you have won and even moreso about moving beyond the Empire and the origin story. I feel like Disney and Lucasfilm went with the Roman Republic: even with the murder of Julius Caesar, Rome becomes tyrannical anyway. On the other hand, I always saw underpinnings of the Bible in _Star Wars._ Old Testament/New Testament. Luke saw a better way. That should matter, not start the old cycle over again. Just my opinion.

And if we can't set new films in the near future of the _Star Wars_ stories, I still would like to see archaeologists a thousand years hence digging up R2 D2 and watching that video of Princess Leia all over again. - And for so long, people had just assumed it was myth, and it shakes the galaxy. Honestly, I think that may be more relatable for right now. What do the future people believe, was it real? I thought the best line in _The Force Awakens_ , which I was fine with, was Han Solo saying, as only Harrison Ford could deliver it, "It's all real."

But simply, I wanted to share my own vision. And I hope it has some hope in it.


End file.
